Iran’s Assassination Playbook Blurs Threat, Theater, and Action

Criminal proxies, public targeting videos, and loosely organized intermediaries give Tehran deniability while creating unpredictable security risks

By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line

Iranian threats against American and Israeli leaders have expanded beyond presidents, military commanders, and senior policymakers to include members of their families. The immediate question is how much of the rhetoric represents psychological warfare and how much reflects preparations for actual operations.

Iranian state television broadcast a three-minute video this week targeting Barron Trump, the 20-year-old son of US President Donald Trump. Titled “Where To Kill Barron Trump?” the video purported to show information about locations associated with him, his security arrangements, and his movements. Produced by media affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and aired on Iran’s Channel 3, the footage claimed that a $10 million bounty had been offered for his killing.

The purported bounty and alleged surveillance have not been independently verified, and no public evidence has emerged linking the broadcast to an operational Iranian assassination team. The US Secret Service said Tuesday that it was aware of the footage and investigates anything that could be perceived as a threat to its protectees, while declining to discuss protective intelligence.

The Barron Trump video followed an earlier production released by the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency focusing on First Lady Melania Trump. That broadcast, reportedly titled “Where to Kill Melania Trump?” presented alleged details about her movements and potential weaknesses in her security. Reports about the Melania video did not indicate that a comparable multimillion-dollar bounty had been offered.

On Monday, Aug. 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added another allegation.

“Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14.

Netanyahu did not initially identify whether he was referring to Yair or Avner Netanyahu or say when or where the alleged attempt occurred.

Newsmax reported Wednesday that Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s 35-year-old elder son, was the alleged target. Citing an unnamed US law enforcement source familiar with the matter, the outlet said Israeli intelligence learned in December 2025 that suspected Iranian operatives were in the Miami area conducting

surveillance of his home and movements.

Israeli officials alerted US authorities and instructed Yair Netanyahu to leave Florida immediately, according to Newsmax. He reportedly returned to Israel without collecting his belongings and has remained there. US and Israeli authorities have not publicly confirmed his identification as the alleged target or the operational details in the report.

Israeli media had previously reported that the security establishment had known about the alleged threat for months and that details were subject to military censorship. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Netanyahu made the disclosure while responding to reports that the Shin Bet security agency had declined to provide protection for political rival Gadi Eisenkot ahead of Israel’s

Oct. 27 election. Netanyahu said the alleged threat against his son demonstrated that security protection was “not a luxury” and that appropriate protection should be provided to every candidate for prime minister.
Iran has a documented history of pursuing targets overseas.

In 2022, the US Justice Department charged IRGC member Shahram Poursafi with attempting to arrange the murder of former US National Security Adviser John Bolton. Prosecutors said the operation was likely intended as retaliation for the January 2020 killing of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

European governments have also accused Iran of using criminal networks as intermediaries. Sweden’s security service has accused Tehran of using criminal groups to target Israeli and Jewish interests, while the British government sanctioned the Swedish-based Foxtrot network in 2025 over attacks allegedly carried out on Iran’s behalf.

In June 2026, the UK joined 22 other countries in condemning Iranian state-linked attacks, intimidation, kidnappings, and assassination plots overseas. A British parliamentary briefing published that month said UK security agencies had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots during the preceding year and identified dissidents, journalists, Israelis, and Jews among Iran’s targets.

The current US-Israeli war with Iran may have increased Tehran’s incentive for retaliation. The conflict began with large-scale strikes on Feb. 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian military officials, expanding the list of figures Iran may seek to avenge.

Daniel Byman, a professor in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a concurrent appointment in its Department of Government, told The Media Line that the escalation had increased Iranian incentives for retaliation. He cautioned against treating every public threat as evidence of an imminent attack.

“The current war has greatly increased Iran’s motivation for different forms of terrorism, including assassinations,” Byman said. “Iran attempted several plots in the past in response to the killing of figures like Qasem Soleimani, and the scale of the US and Israeli killings in Iran is far, far greater than what we saw in the past.”

He pointed to a possible countervailing factor: “US and Israeli operations also demonstrate a thorough penetration of Iranian intelligence networks. It is possible that the networks used for foreign assassination attempts are also penetrated …”

Byman said he could not know that for certain.

“Highly publicized plotting, such as videos regarding the president’s family, are more likely intimidation and trolling attempts, as this will lead to increased security, making an actual plot harder,” he said.

Public threats, though, are only one part of Iran’s evolving overseas model.

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher in the Iran and the Shi’ite Axis Program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said the scale of Iran’s losses means the drive for retaliation is unlikely to disappear even if diplomacy eventually reduces the military confrontation.

“The Iranians are now in the revenge business,” Citrinowicz told The Media Line. “This is not something that is going away. The Iranians, regardless of what will happen in terms of an agreement, yes or no, will seek revenge for Khamenei, I think, for the foreseeable future.”
Citrinowicz said Iran’s increasing reliance on criminals and other intermediaries offers Tehran deniability but also creates vulnerabilities.

“Their modus operandi is very unique. They are using third-party elements because they want to create a distance between them and the operation itself,” he said.

“The good thing for them is that they’re distancing themselves from any activity that happens. The bad thing is that you’re hiring people that are not experienced in this kind of work, and the signature they create helps local authorities discover that,” Citrinowicz said.

“I’m not underestimating their ability to do things, but I think the modus operandi is helping security services to track what the Iranians are trying to do,” he added.

Byman reached a similar conclusion from a different angle.

“Iran’s shift to using criminal networks makes detection harder in some ways, but these networks are also more likely to betray Iran and are more amateurish,” he said. “Most of these plots fail, but at a relatively low cost to Iran.”

Outsourcing allows an operation to be disrupted without exposing large numbers of Iranian intelligence personnel or directly linking Tehran to an attack.

Irina Tsukerman, president of Scarab Rising, said the distinction between propaganda and operations is not absolute. She spoke to The Media Line before Wednesday’s report identified Yair Netanyahu as the alleged target.

“Given Iran’s established record of surveillance, kidnapping plots, assassination attempts, and planned attacks against Israelis abroad, Netanyahu’s claim is plausible enough to warrant serious attention, although there is not enough public information to determine how advanced the alleged operation became,” Tsukerman told The Media Line.

She cautioned that sophisticated-looking targeting videos are not proof of physical surveillance or an active assassination cell.

“Some information presented in state media may originate from social media, commercially available databases, hacking, open-source research, exaggeration, or fabrication, so the existence of an elaborate video does not demonstrate that an assassination team has been deployed,” she said.

The danger, Tsukerman argued, can develop after the material is released.

“Criminals can respond to the prospect of money, ideological sympathizers can volunteer assistance, and Iranian intelligence can later identify useful individuals who began acting without receiving instructions from Tehran,” she explained.

“Under those circumstances, propaganda can become part of an operational environment even when the original broadcast was produced primarily for intimidation.”

That distinction also complicates the frequently used concept of Iranian “sleeper cells.”

Tsukerman said the term can suggest organized teams living covertly in Western countries while awaiting direct instructions from Tehran. Recent investigations instead point to looser

systems in which intelligence officers, criminals, locally recruited individuals, foreign nationals, and other intermediaries perform separate tasks.
Such networks can still leave detectable traces. Surveillance of a target, unusual financial transfers, recruitment attempts, weapons acquisition, and communications with known Iranian intermediaries can form an identifiable pattern when intelligence and law enforcement agencies combine information across jurisdictions.

BANGKOK (AP) — China’s foreign minister said his country and the United States should overcome obstacles between the nations ahead of an expected summit next month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Wang Yi met with U.S. ambassador to China David Perdue on Wednesday and called on both sides to “focus on the positive agenda, properly manage differences, remove interference and overcome obstacles to high-level exchanges between the two countries,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Thursday.

China-U.S. relations “still face various risks and challenges,” he acknowledged in a statement released by CCTV.

Trump and Xi met in May in Beijing and pledged to keep the relationship stable and maintain the fragile trade truce. Trump invited Xi to meet Sept. 24 in the U.S. but the exact date of the Chinese leader’s visit has not been confirmed.

Since then, however, the U.S. and China have continued to take targeted economic action against each other including the U.S. banning Chinese-made robots and China banning American entities engaging in trade and other activities in China.

A small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters next to a remote coastal town in Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone on board, according to officials.

The Piper PA-24 was heading for the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage, according to a statement from the Alaska Department of Public Safety. Seldovia’s airport is about 136 miles (219 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

After it crashed, it was submerged in about 15 feet (4.6 meters) of water in the Seldovia Slough near the shore, said Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska region chief. Troopers had to wait until the tide went out in order to reach it.

Troopers were able to get the bodies of the four adults out of the plane. They’re being sent to the medical examiner’s office and their names will not be released until next of kin are notified, according to the Department of Public Safety.

It was not immediately clear what may have caused the crash.

The NTSB is investigating.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, of Alaska, said he’ll be getting a briefing from the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration as they work to figure out what went wrong.

“These tragedies are heartbreaking and unacceptable, which is why aviation safety and infrastructure in Alaska continue to be a top focus of mine,” he said in a post on Facebook.

Less than a week earlier, another plane crashed at a remote military site in western Alaska, killing all eight people on board. The aircraft had been making its second runway approach in heavy fog and its pilots could not see the gravel airstrip, authorities said.

(AP) – Six months into the U.S. conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump says American and allied forces have achieved major military gains, even as the administration works to turn those battlefield successes into a lasting agreement.

Trump initially predicted the war would last four to five weeks. But the administration has shifted from sustained strikes toward economic pressure and diplomacy.

The White House says the strategy reflects a position of strength. U.S. and Israeli operations have sharply reduced Iran’s military capabilities, damaged its defense-industrial base and weakened its ability to threaten American forces and regional allies.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that Iran’s defense industry had suffered between 80 and 90 percent attrition and could take years to rebuild. He said Iran had lost much of its ability to launch large-scale drone attacks, and that its navy had effectively been reduced to small vessels capable of harassment and mine-laying.

President Trump has gone further, saying Iran’s navy and air force are “totally gone.”

The administration also says the United States quickly established air superiority over Iran, allowing American and Israeli aircraft to operate largely without opposition. U.S. Central Command has continued targeting missile and drone launch sites, air-defense systems, command centers, coastal surveillance facilities and communications networks.

Those operations have changed the strategic balance in the Middle East, but several of Trump’s original objectives remain unresolved.

One of the most urgent is keeping open the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes. Iran’s efforts to use the waterway as an economic chokepoint have driven up prices for fuel and fertilizer, increasing pressure on American consumers and farmers.

Trump has repeatedly said the strait is open or functioning, despite continued reports of attacks and disruptions. In a recent radio interview, he said occasional drones or rockets did not mean the waterway had ceased operating.

The administration has proposed linking a broader agreement with Iran to the reopening of the strait and an end to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. Trump has also suggested that the United States could impose terms, including possible tolls, to ensure safe passage for international shipping.

Another unresolved issue is Iran’s nuclear program.

Last year, Trump declared that U.S. strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But officials continue to face questions about an estimated 970 pounds of enriched uranium believed to be buried beneath sites targeted by American and Israeli forces.

Trump has said the material should be retrieved and destroyed in coordination with Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has not agreed to that proposal, and experts say removing the stockpile without Tehran’s consent could require a major military operation.

A June memorandum of understanding reportedly called for Iran to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons and dilute its highly enriched uranium. However, negotiations broke down before many details could be settled.

The administration has also sought to weaken Iran-backed militant groups. Early U.S. strikes targeted militia forces in Iraq, while American diplomacy helped produce an agreement for Israeli forces to leave southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament. Hezbollah has rejected direct talks and refuses to give up its weapons.

Trump’s Republican allies argue that the campaign has demonstrated the value of decisive military action followed by economic and diplomatic pressure. Democrats and critics counter that the war has lasted far longer than promised.

The White House says the United States now holds the leverage needed to secure a stronger deal—one that protects American forces, supports Israel and other allies, and prevents Iran from rebuilding its military and nuclear capabilities.

SAUGATUCK, Mich. (AP) — When Democrats gathered this week in a West Michigan congressional district they’re trying to flip blue, they wanted to talk about the cost of living under President Donald Trump. But it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to a controversy dividing their party.

One attendee chided U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten for failing to support Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

“Your inflammatory rhetoric has nothing to do with creating a better economic future for the people of West Michigan, and everything to do with protecting the pipeline of our tax dollars to Israel,” the woman said.

The exchange captured a problem confronting Democrats as they head toward November. Party leaders believe concerns about the economy have given them an opening to win control of Congress, but internal divisions are making it harder to keep the focus there.

Nowhere is that tension more pronounced than Michigan, where Democrats are trying to regroup after a bruising Senate primary that El-Sayed won over U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens earlier this month. Disputes over Israel, antisemitism and El-Sayed’s association with controversial online commentator Hasan Piker have complicated the party’s effort to turn its attention to Republican Mike Rogers.

With the election fast approaching, Scholten and some other Democrats have withheld their support for El-Sayed for now.

“I think it’s up to the top of the ticket to unify the top of the ticket,” Scholten said Tuesday.

El-Sayed, who would be the country’s first Muslim senator, has denounced antisemitism while fiercely criticizing Israel for its military operations in Gaza.

Some members of his party have balked at his rhetoric.

Michigan state Rep. Jeremy Moss, the Democratic nominee for a House seat outside Detroit, has also withheld his support. In an interview with The Atlantic’s David Frum released Wednesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, said El-Sayed should not “make excuses” for domestic terrorism.

She was referencing a video statement he put out in March following an attack on Temple Israel synagogue outside Detroit when he said “hurt people hurt people.”

Some Democrats outside Michigan have gone further in criticizing El-Sayed.

“There’s no way I’m ever coming out for El-Sayed, right now,” New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer said on CNN, adding that El-Sayed has “refused to back off his views towards Jewish Americans.”

El-Sayed’s appearances on the campaign trail with Piker have become a particular flashpoint in the disagreement. Piker is a popular streamer with a history of controversial remarks that include saying America “deserved 9/11.”

Piker recently became embroiled in controversy again when he argued against the idea that opposing Israel is antisemitic. American Jews are not uniformly supportive of Israel, he said, but many “Jewish institutions” are “teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic” and “it’s a very dangerous mode of propaganda.”

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel mind you, but against American Jews,” he said.

The backlash was swift among Democrats, with critics saying Piker was suggesting that American Jews who support Israel were inviting violence.

“Hasan Piker’s dangerous and hateful language targeting Jewish Americans has no place in our civic discourse,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, wrote on social media. “Suggesting that Jewish Americans bear responsibility for hatred or violence directed against them is wrong, dangerous, and antisemitic.”

Piker rejected that interpretation in a phone interview, saying he was warning that associating American Jews broadly with Israel’s actions could fuel antisemitism, much as Muslims in the United States have been associated with Islamic terrorist groups.

He said he was never particularly close with El-Sayed’s campaign — despite appearing with him at various events during the primary — and said that he did not want the race to become a conversation about him. He said he did not regret the remarks, however.

“I’m just a platform, I’m just a megaphone for people’s anger and frustration,” Piker said. “Even if I was going to go away tomorrow, I don’t think this problem would go away for our politicians.”

While El-Sayed has put some distance between himself and Piker amid the controversies, he has refused to cut ties completely. In a statement, he said “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokesperson.”

Republicans see an opportunity in the continued dispute.

“It’s great,” said Republican strategist Jason Roe. “You can tell these Democrats are not going to distance themselves. Piker is to Democrats what Trump is to Republicans. You embrace him, it’s not helpful, and distance is also not helpful.”

Democrats who have rallied behind El-Sayed are increasingly eager to move beyond the fight.

“I am done. So don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker. It’s not what November is about,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell said Wednesday. “I don’t agree with Hasan Piker on a lot of stuff.”

She appeared alongside El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland at a campaign event in Ann Arbor on Wednesday. The day prior, El-Sayed stood beside Eli Savit, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, the party’s nominee for secretary of state, at a press conference.

Democrats who have backed El-Sayed argue that the party is largely unified and that the remaining disagreements are a natural part of moving beyond a contentious primary. Raskin, who is Jewish, described it as a “process that we go through” after the primary.

“The Democratic Party is a big, sometimes an unruly family, but we’re all going to be together in the end,” Raskin said.

Michigan Democrats from across the state are expected to gather this weekend for a convention in Lansing to finalize the party’s November ticket. Ahead of the convention, all the party’s nominees and party chair, Curtis Hertel, sent a letter saying that “disruptive behavior or harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.”

“This convention is our moment to celebrate our candidates,” the letter read.

El-Sayed at Wednesday’s event in Ann Arbor expressed frustration with the continued focus on Piker.

“You would think if you turn on any media that this whole campaign is about a streamer in California,” El-Sayed said at the Ann Arbor event. He added that he’s “less interested in going to the sort of tabloid version of our politics where we cover this like, who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, who’s talking to who?”

But El-Sayed acknowledged that some Democrats have yet to put the primary behind them.

“There are a few people who are still nursing wounds or grievances from the primary,” El-Sayed said. “I get it. Losing is hard.”

___

Associated Press reporter Jesse Bedayn contributed to this report.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Kids under 18 will soon see a host of changes to their Instagram and Facebook experiences thanks to a historic $18 billion settlement Meta Platforms reached Wednesday with 48 U.S. states.

Besides the money, which will be paid out over a decade, Meta has agreed to strengthen its age estimates to keep kids under 13 off its platforms and teens in age-appropriate accounts, enact a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18, block kids from the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and hide “like” counts, among other changes.

While acknowledging the changes go further than Meta has ever gone when it comes to child safety, critics and children’s advocates cautioned it will not solve its myriad problems overnight.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said the settlement is a “significant milestone,” but parents should not see Instagram as suddenly safe for children.

“The agreement has a big problem in that it allows Meta to define harm,” Béjar said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah, you only get like two hours of alcohol or two hours of cigarettes a day,’ but it’s still as bad for you because of what’s getting delivered.”

Béjar, the first witness to testify during the federal trial cut short by the settlement, would like to see Meta address the effect of content recommendations to teens, which he says can prove addictive. While teens might put their phone down when they hit the two-hour limit, they can be distressed about it because the way the platform is designed leaves them craving more.

Meta said people over 18 also can adopt versions of the new controls individually, such as daily time-limit reminders, but there will not be an option for them to opt into the overall settings for what teens experience on the platform.

To protect kids, first Meta has to know who they are. While the company has already been using artificial intelligence to determine if kids are lying about their age — either to sign up if they are under 13, which is not allowed, or to use adult accounts when they are 13 to 17 — it did not always work.

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to strengthen its technology to check kids’ ages, using its own as well as third-party tools, with regular outside audits on how well it is working. The agreement also includes specific goals around false positive rates — that is, minors who are identified as over 18. And if a user is identified as under 13 and kicked off the platforms, Meta will check the ages of their friends, too.

“The age assurance section is reasonably good because it has measurement, has independent testing, has goals,” Béjar said. “Because I think Meta should be measured on effectiveness, not effort.”

Meta requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account, in line with federal child privacy law.

In his testimony last week, Béjar said Meta took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms.

“Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts,” he said. But despite that, he added, there were “no goals, no metrics” to detect and check kids’ ages who were suspected to be under 13.

Critics have faulted Meta over many of its safety features that users have to manually turn on, or opt into themselves.

Of the host of safeguards listed in the settlement, many are on as a default. This includes the two-hour time limit, which can only be turned off with a parent’s permission, as well as the night mode that blocks use between midnight and 6 a.m.

Still, under the agreement other features, such as turning off video autoplay or showing posts in chronological order rather than having algorithms decide what to show kids scrolling through their feeds, will be opt-in.

Josh Golin, executive director of online safety nonprofit Fairplay, said the deal appeared to be too focused on offering tools to parents rather than restricting harmful features altogether.

“We are disappointed that the settlement does not turn off by default recommendation algorithms that connect kids to predators and send young people down dangerous rabbit holes,” Golin said.

Questions around default settings came up at the trial earlier this week when a lawyer for the states suing Meta pressed Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on the low adoption rate among teens for the “take a break” feature, which prompts users to step away if they have been scrolling a while.

Very few teens used the feature when Instagram first introduced it, but since launching separate teen accounts in 2024, Meta has made it the default setting for teenage users. Still, if a teen didn’t want to take a break, they could simply swipe away the notification.

Some researchers have found that many past protections Meta has rolled out are ineffective or don’t work as advertised.

“It is a little premature, unfortunately, to tell if exactly all the changes we want to see are going to happen,” said Yaël Eisenstat, director of policy and impact for the Cybersafety Research Center, which recently audited dozens of safety tools offered by both Meta and other social media companies and said most fell short.

Still, Eisenstat said, Wednesday’s settlement is monumental in showing that alternative approaches are possible.

For years, Meta “decided to go against the advice of some of their own internal employees and continue to ignore the fact that these design features were unsafe in search of profit,” said Eisenstat, who also previously worked at Meta, then Facebook, before leaving the company in 2019. The measures outlined Wednesday at the very least show that there are technically-feasible options that can make the platform safer, she said — something whistleblowers and others have already “been saying very loudly.”

Like others, Eisenstat stressed that there was a lot of work left to be done — and that it will require a combination of technical solutions, market forces and government regulation.

“There’s no singular silver bullet for fixing all of this,” she said. “I’m just glad that at least we are catching up a little bit now.”

The settlement, which also includes the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, must still be approved by a judge.

___

Grantham-Philips reported from Chicago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran in late February, he initially forecast it would last four to five weeks. Six months later, there’s still no off-ramp in sight despite Trump’s repeated assertions that the war has been won or a deal to resolve it was nearly complete.

A June memorandum of understanding designed to pave the way to end the war has fallen by the wayside. U.S. stockpiles of key weapons have diminished and the Trump administration has pivoted to pressuring Iran economically rather than launching more strikes.

As the shape of the war has morphed over the last half year, so have the goals for the conflict.

One of the prime goals now — reopening the Strait of Hormuz — was not one of Trump’s original objectives. The waterway had been a vital shipping lane through which about 20% of the world’s oil passed.

But Iran seized on it as a chokepoint for the global economy and it has been largely closed since the war started, driving up prices for fuel and fertilizer needed for farms and creating economic and political pressure in the U.S.

The U.S. has had tactical success on its goals to degrade Iran’s military capabilities. But some of the other key objectives Trump laid out at the start of the conflict remain unfulfilled — and others have shifted.

Here’s a look at the objectives and what we know about where they stand:

Last June, Trump declared that the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But when the war started, his aides justified the strikes by warning that Iran had been just weeks away from developing a bomb.

One of the most pressing questions has been what will be done with a stockpile of about 970 pounds (440 kilograms) of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use for a weapon. The material is believed to be buried under three sites bombed by the U.S. and Israel last year. Trump said in a May 29 social media post that it would be retrieved by the U.S. “in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”

Iran has not said whether it would consent. Without permission from Iran, experts have said seizing it would be a dangerous mission requiring a sizable deployment of U.S. troops into the country.

Officials said that Tehran reaffirmed in the June memorandum of understanding that it would not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The deal called for Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. But many other details about Iran’s program were left for future negotiations, and it’s unclear how much progress, if any, was made before talks quickly fell off.

Trump has said that a proposed deal with Iran would include the reopening of the strait and the U.S. ending its blockade of Tehran’s ports, but at other times he has suggested the international waterway would somehow become American territory and indicated the U.S. could impose a toll on passing ships.

Trump also has repeatedly said that the strait is open, including during an interview on Wednesday on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s radio show.

“It’s a functioning strait. Yes, every once in a while, there’ll be a drone or a rocket or something shot, but it is a very functioning strait,” Trump said.

One of the prime objectives laid out by the administration was to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.”

Trump said in late March that Iran’s missiles “are mostly decimated” and that 90% of their missiles and launchers were knocked out.

By mid-May, that shifted to a more conservative estimate, with the president saying that 82% of Iran’s missiles were gone.

Iran has shown its ability to still launch attacks in the region, including drone strikes on ships sailing through the strait.

As recently as July, the U.S. military still had Iranian military targets to strike, with its Central Command announcing it was striking “Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and communications networks.”

Early in the war, the president and his administration sometimes listed this as a standalone objective. Other times, it has fallen off their list.

U.S. Central Command has said its targets for strikes in Iran have included weapons production and missile and drone manufacturing facilities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in early June that Iran has had “massive destruction” of its defense industrial base and “80 to 90% of attrition. It will take years for them to rebuild it.”

The U.S. and Israel quickly established air superiority in the skies above Iran, where they flew largely unchallenged.

Rubio told lawmakers that Iran still has drone capabilities, but it lacks the ability to use swarms of drones to attack targets, as it did at the start of the war. He also said Iran does not have a navy anymore, and relies on small craft outfitted with machine guns that harass ships and sometimes drop mines in the water.

Trump on Wednesday said that Iran’s navy and air force are “totally gone.”

Trump, in a March social media post, added another objective for the U.S.: “Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others.”

The U.S. maintains thousands of troops on bases and other installations in the region, but Trump has been unclear on how far he’d be willing to go to protect Middle East allies from threats in the long term. In June, when the U.S. said Iran fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, the U.S. launched strikes on Iran in response.

But one ally — Oman — has notably not been feeling the warmth of Trump’s offer of protection, and instead has grappled with Trump’s wrath over the deal it was negotiating with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. In mid-August, he threatened in an interview that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way,” using an expletive for emphasis.

In March, Trump and his administration repeatedly said degrading Iran’s proxy terror networks was a key goal.

As time has gone on, administration officials have offered fewer updates about this objective, which the president described as ensuring that “the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces” and “ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

Early on, the U.S. struck Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq. But the biggest focus has been Israel’s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which Iran backs. Iran has insisted that the fighting in Lebanon must be stopped as part of any deal with the U.S. Israel and the Lebanese government announced a deal, which was mediated by the U.S., for Israeli forces to leave southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament — something an administration official described as a “huge step,” speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to address the issue on the record. But the militant group has refused direct talks and its leader has said it will not disarm.

___

Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At 71 and a few years into retirement, Linda Henry felt like she was in good health, and only went to her doctor in Southern California for the occasional checkup.

So it was a shock when she found out in 2024 that she had been enrolled in hospice, a specialized end-of-life care usually provided to people with six months or less to live. A Medicare worker told her the system said she had heart failure.

Henry was a victim of rampant fraud in the hospice industry, a problem that’s been especially extreme in California, where scammers have taken advantage of historically weak government oversight. Fraudsters have created fake hospices and tricked people into enrolling, or stolen people’s identities to bill Medicare for hospice services.

California’s been a focus of the Trump administration’s crackdown on fraud in federally-funded health programs, with more than 1,000 California hospices removed from Medicare since early 2025. Federal officials estimate LA County alone accounts for an estimated $3.5 billion in fraudulent hospice claims.

The state says it’s doing its part to tackle the issue. California has revoked nearly 500 licenses since putting a moratorium on new hospices in 2021 and in June adopted long-awaited emergency regulations that set more stringent criteria for approving new licenses.

Since hospice is a form of palliative care meant for terminally ill patients, once someone enrolls in it, Medicare will not pay for additional medical treatment outside of it, leaving vulnerable seniors to miss out on appointments and be denied crucial care. Meanwhile, millions of taxpayer dollars are being funneled to fraudsters every year, and those who truly need hospice care might not get it if they enroll with a fraudulent hospice operator.

Advocates say they don’t have a clear estimate of how many people like Henry have been unwittingly caught up in fraud, but urge state and federal cooperation.

In 2026, the state had about 2,100 hospice organizations, down from 2,800 four years prior. New York, which has far more stringent rules for registering a hospice, has just 39, according to its state health department.

A 2022 state audit found rampant fraud and abuse in the system, particularly in LA County. It found dozens of hospice agencies were often clustered in the same building as well as a rapid increase in the number of hospices being established and abnormally high rates of patients being discharged. Hospice is often provided at patients’ homes, meaning one registered hospice can serve patients in numerous locations.

In April, federal prosecutors made arrests in five cases involving hospice fraud in the LA area. A week later, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said 21 people were arrested for a multimillion scheme to use stolen identities to charge for hospice services. His office has filed more than 100 hospice-related criminal cases and secured over 50 hospice-related convictions since 2021.

“This is a California problem,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said at a press conference announcing the federal arrests in April. “I call California the kingdom of fraud, and Gavin Newsom reigns over this kingdom here.”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of basing its fraud-busting efforts on politics, with the harshest penalties placed on states run by Democrats. Those efforts have at times contained errors. In April, administration acknowledged to The Associated Press it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe in New York.

“This isn’t a political game for us. This is about protecting taxpayer dollars, protecting programs sick and vulnerable Californians rely on, and protecting our state,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement a few days later.

Fraud might begin with a robocall, or a knock on the door asking someone to sign a form giving away their personal information and Medicare number. They might offer gift cards and vitamin supplements, or even weekly cash deliveries in exchange for signing up for hospice.

Henry believes her Medicare number was stolen after a healthcare payment portal that services insurances was hit by a cyberattack.

She found out about her hospice enrollment in September 2024 after her doctor billed Medicare for an allergy test and was denied. Soon, other claims were being returned unpaid.

For months, she made dozens of calls and wrote emails to Medicare. Her doctor wrote a letter stating that she was in good health.

She was allegedly enrolled at Fortuna Hospice Inc., which did not pick up the phone or return her messages. At one point, Henry drove to the listed address and found only a seemingly empty office building. She spoke with FBI investigators, the state health and human services agency, and a nonprofit advocacy group for Medicare patients.

“I delayed physical appointments and my colonoscopy and all this stuff because I knew that we were going to fight about this and it wasn’t going to get paid,” she said.

Eight months later, Medicare recognized that she was a victim of fraud. One year after she lodged her complaint, she finally began seeing doctors again.

Some of the enhanced oversight began under the Biden administration, when the federal government said it would place newly Medicare-enrolled hospices in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas under a period of enhanced oversight. The agency added Georgia and Ohio in December 2025, and CMS announced in May a nationwide six-month moratorium on all new Medicare enrollments by providers of hospice and home care.

The Trump administration’s fraud crackdown has invited criticism for its focus on providers with immigrant backgrounds. In January, Dr. Mehmet Oz of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services blasted rampant fraud in Los Angeles County while standing outside an Armenian bakery and alleging the “Russian Armenian mafia” was behind the scams. That prompted a civil-rights complaint by Newsom. An investigation into daycare fraud in Minnesota centered on facilities run by immigrants from Somalia.

Beyond hospice, the Trump administration has deferred more than $2 billion in Medicaid payments to the state because of “suspected fraud and noncompliance.” Medicaid is the government-funded healthcare program for low-income people. State officials say the federal government hasn’t provided details about why they suspect fraud.

In June, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against fraudsters responsible for $6.5 billion in false claims submitted to Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs across the country.

Sheila Clark, CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, testified at an April congressional hearing about a woman who couldn’t get her cataract surgery approved by Medicare because she was falsely enrolled in hospice.

The woman fell while trying to go to the bathroom at night because she couldn’t see and broke her hip.

“She died two months later in a skilled nursing facility. That did not need to happen,” Clark said. “These scammers here are going to do whatever they have to do to try and survive, and we need to work at the state level and the federal level to make sure that we are going to clean house.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at the U.S. Capitol hours after Lindsey Graham’s funeral to an unusually attentive audience.

Half the Senate gathered for the closed-door meeting. Senators set their mobile phones down and focused their attention. Along with representatives from the House, they listened as Zelenskyy fielded questions about his country’s strategy in the long war against Russia.

Zelenskyy told them how Ukraine was repelling the Russian invasion, taking the fight to Moscow, but in need of U.S. help with Patriot interceptor missiles and licensing agreements, expanded access to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet — and most immediately ahead of a Senate vote that July night — a punishing Russia sanctions package to deprive President Vladimir Putin of the oil and gas revenue fueling the war machine.

“He said, ‘We need this legislation,’” recalled Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview. “Both the troops and the Ukrainian people need this for morale.”

“You could feel palpably in the room a sense that — Zelenskyy’s confidence of their ability to hold and to persevere,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, a former Democratic leader. “There was a sense in the room that, look, we can be successful.”

The massive Russian sanctions package from the late Sen. Graham represented the most ambitious effort to support Ukraine since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. After two years of legislative inaction, it would be one of the few moves from Congress since lawmakers sent supplemental aid funding to Ukraine in 2024.

The Senate advanced the sanctions bill that night, with Zelenskyy taking a rare seat in the chamber to watch the proceedings — senators waving and flashing a thumbs-up as they cast votes. Days later, it sailed to passage, on a vote of 86-11, sending the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act to the House.

But next steps are highly uncertain. House Speaker Mike Johnson helms a Republican majority reluctant to tangle itself in U.S. affairs overseas. And many Democrats supportive of Ukraine warn the bill would hand Trump too much tariff authority with no real checks from Congress.

Daniel Balson, of the pro-democracy advocacy group Razom for Ukraine, is pressing Congress not to lose momentum.

“It’s important not to underestimate symbolically what this would mean,” Balson said. “It would show Ukrainians that, hiccups and all, there is still an international alliance that stands behind Ukraine’s fight.”

It wasn’t the first time Zelenskyy arrived to a hero’s welcome in Washington, and may not be the last.

But in between there have been moments of grave uncertainty in what has become a long war, longer than World War I.

Zelenskyy first appeared on a private video call with lawmakers in March 2022, days after the start of the war, when he urged the U.S. to send planes to help Ukraine defend its skies from the Russian bombardment. That winter, Zelenskyy delivered a dramatic Christmas-time address to Congress, giving thanks to “every American” in a speech evocative of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s own visit during World War II.

But Congress abandoned another round of Ukraine funds in 2023 as Republicans aligned themselves with Trump, who was on track as the Republican Party’s front-runner to retake the White House.

And once Trump returned to power in 2025, action on Ukraine aid ground to a halt. Trump berated Zelenskyy during a high-profile Oval Office meeting, deriding Zelenskyy’s “hatred” for Putin as a roadblock to peace.

“This has largely hinged on President Trump,” said Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former Air Force brigadier general, who explained that more Republicans would publicly stand with Ukraine if Trump gave the nod.

Still, Zelenskyy kept Congress close, meeting with lawmakers abroad and returning to the U.S. Capitol as he did after Graham’s funeral in Washington on July 28.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Zelenskyy has endured a “kind of a baptism by fire since he’s been president in the middle of war, trying to manage confusing messages coming out of Washington.”

It took Graham essentially a full year to bring Trump on board with the Russia sanctions package, and when he did he immediately shared the news with Senate colleagues last month at the NATO summit in Turkey. Graham, who then flew on to Kyiv, died days later back in Washington, likely of a torn aorta.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who had partnered with Graham during the lengthy process, said Graham told him that winning Trump’s approval was a “BFD,” slang for a really big deal.

At its core, the bill seeks to deprive Moscow of oil and gas revenues by pressuring China, India and other customers not to buy Russian energy. It would allow Trump to impose sweeping tariffs up to 100% on goods from those countries entering the U.S.

Liberal Democrats have misgivings — not with Zelenskyy or Ukraine — but with the bill’s tariff powers, which they worry Trump will deploy in ways Congress cannot control.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, have raised objections to the bill. More than 30 senators had supported a failed amendment to limit Trump’s tariff powers.

“This is not so much a sanctions bill as it is a massive backdoor authority for President Trump to impose more tariffs, including on our European allies, that hurt American families,” Meeks said in a statement.

Hoyer, who partnered with Meeks on a separate Ukraine security act that cleared the House earlier this year over Johnson’s objections, is imploring his colleagues not to let this moment pass. He believes Congress and the courts will keep the president in check.

“You know there was so much negative vibes that we were sending,” Hoyer said. “We’ve got to send a letter to these courageous Ukrainians that we’re with them.”

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Closing arguments are set for Thursday in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children in a case that has drawn attention to postpartum mental health.

Proceedings are expected to resume around 9 a.m. in Plymouth Superior Court. The prosecution and defense will each have an hour to make their final case before the jury receives instructions and begins deliberating.

Clancy did not testify during the trial, which is in its fifth week. Prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses, including Clancy’s then-husband, while the defense called 10 witnesses, including some of Clancy’s friends and relatives.

Multiple psychologists and psychiatrists also testified about Clancy’s mental health, which is the central issue in the case.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

___

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, with her lawyers arguing she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy at the family’s home in coastal Duxbury in January 2023 before attempting suicide. Postpartum psychosis is a rare mental illness that is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

Prosecutors say Clancy planned the killings and understood her actions were wrong.

If convicted of murder, Clancy faces a mandatory life prison sentence. If jurors find her not guilty because she lacked criminal responsibility, she would not face prison time but could be committed to a psychiatric facility.

Testifying Wednesday as the final rebuttal witness for the prosecution, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of Virginia and a senior psychiatrist for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit said he did not believe Clancy’s account that a voice ordered her to kill the children.

Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague asked Dr. Gregory Saathoff a series of questions about Clancy’s account: Did the voice tell her where to kill the children? How to kill them? What to use? In what order? Saathoff answered no each time.

All three children were strangled with exercise bands in the family’s basement before Clancy jumped from a second-floor window while her husband went to pick up takeout and medication on Jan. 24, 2023. Saathoff said her ability to accomplish everything she did without direction indicated Clancy “had control, control of the sequence of what she was doing throughout.”

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked Saathoff about Clancy’s attempts to search online for information about postpartum depression, her visits to multiple maternal and mental health providers, disclosures to her mother and then-husband that she was suicidal and feared that she would harm her children, and calls to a suicide hotline — all attempts that Reddington contends establish that Clancy realized something was seriously wrong and made a sincere effort over time to get help.

Reddington, referencing the prosecutor’s opening statement, asked whether Saathoff believes that Clancy decided to kill her children because she “no longer liked the life she thought she wanted” and was making “a selfish choice” to “manipulate her providers, seek out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious.”

“I think that statement that you read really minimizes what she was going through,” Saathoff responded.

___

Willingham reported from Boston.