TOP STORIES
Trump: Iran Will Be Held Responsible for ‘Every Shot Fired’ by Houthis | The Hill
President Trump on Monday vowed to hold Iran responsible for shots fired by the Houthis, after U.S. airstrikes took out multiple leaders from the military group this weekend. “Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN. Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” Trump said on Truth Social.
In the years leading up to its invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, Hamas developed a concrete plan to destroy the Jewish state, in full coordination with Hezbollah and Iran, according to classified documents published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The Hamas documents reveal that in the lead-up to October 7, Iran was a critical player in funding Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel, that the Gaza-based terror group pushed for a coordinated attack from multiple fronts, and that its leader Yahya Sinwar truly believed that his military force could push Israel toward collapse.
Cyber Group Says It Disrupted Iranian Shipping Communications | Iran International
A hacker group called Lab Dookhtegan said it has disrupted the communication networks of 116 ships belonging to two major Iranian shipping companies in one of the biggest attacks against Iranian maritime operations, critical to the country's oil sales. “In an unprecedented move, we successfully disrupted the communication network of two Iranian companies that, among various terrorist activities, are responsible for supplying munitions to Houthis,” the group wrote on Telegram. The attack, which the group says was timed to coincide with US military operations against the Iran-backed Yemeni Houthis, severed the ships' connections to each other, their ports, and external communication channels.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Mohsen Rafiqdoost, a former high-level IRGC official who also served as a bodyguard for the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared in a video interview that he oversaw operations to eliminate exiled Iranian dissidents. Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), said, “Mohsen Rafiqdoost’s comments are an admission of guilt. They should be replayed whenever an Iranian official is interviewed by a Western journalist denying complicity in assassination plots. The trial beginning on Monday is a reminder that the regime’s terror threat is real, potentially lethal, and will not go away by just burying our heads in the sand.”
President Trump, for the first time, is threatening the Islamic Republic of Iran with “consequences” for the ongoing aggression of one of its proxies, the Houthis of Yemen. “This is a form of coercive diplomacy,” the United Against Nuclear Iran policy director, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. “The president is making a threat, and he has to be prepared to follow through on that threat if the Iranians and the Houthis keep defying him. He is not afraid to be direct and threatening in a way that President Biden was.”
In a drastic statement, U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to attack Iran if the Houthi terror group in Yemen resumed its attacks. “Bravo Mr. President,” responded Jason Brodsky, Policy Director United Against Nuclear Iran. “It's long overdue to pierce the veil of Iranian plausible deniability to restore deterrence.” In several more posts on X, Brodsky praised Trump’s focus on Iran as the responsible party for the actions of its proxies, which he said corrects “a failing across presidential administrations of both parties in Iran policy.” “Khamenei sits comfortably in Tehran while he sets the region on fire and the U.S., instead of going after the source of the problem, either doesn't respond or when it does, it aims at Khamenei's disposable proxies,” Brodsky lamented.“ And he banks on voices in the West with hysterical warnings about triggering WWIII to weaken U.S. resolve, which in the process protects the regime and does the work for him.” The only exceptions to this rule, Brodsky said, were Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, when the U.S. struck Iranian naval targets in retaliation for the mining of a U.S. warship, and President Trump’s killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. “The Israelis have shown it's possible to restore deterrence by hitting IRGC terrorists on Iranian soil without triggering a wide scale war. The U.S. should learn lessons from this experience,” Brodsky wrote.
The Manhattan-based federal trial of an individual hired by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad coincided with the shocking revelation that Tehran ordered the killing of dissidents in Europe, a news that could have profound implications for President Trump's Iran policy. Jason Brodsky, policy director of the United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), said, "Mohsen Rafiqdoost's comments are a guilty plea. It has to be replayed every time an Iranian official is interviewed by a Western journalist who denies involvement in the assassination plot. The trial that began on Monday is a reminder that the threat of regime violence is real, potentially deadly, and will not disappear simply by burying our heads in the sand."
The United States continues to launch military strikes against the Houthis, while regional tensions escalate. These operations aim to secure international shipping lanes and ensure the flow of global trade. UANI Research Director Dan Roth explains how the Houthis are strengthening their defensive position with Iranian support.
NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran Says ‘Committed’ to Cooperating with UN Nuclear Watchdog | Al Arabiya
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Monday that his country was “committed” to cooperating with the UN’s nuclear agency after meeting with its chief, Rafael Grossi. Gharibabadi said in a post on X that the talks in Vienna with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been “frank and constructive.” In a post of his own, Grossi said cooperation was “indispensable to provide credible guarantees of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
PROTESTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Masih Alinejad, the charismatic Iranian dissident and journalist who prosecutors say was targeted by her former homeland’s government for assassination, is set to testify Tuesday at the trial of two men accused in the plot. Alinejad, an author and contributor to Voice of America, is scheduled to take the witness stand at midday at a Manhattan federal trial that has already featured testimony from the man who says he was hired to kill her in the summer of 2022.
Iran has presented a prototype of its national AI platform, designed to address both the country’s lagging technological development and the threat of international sanctions. The AI platform will see a phased rollout with the final version expected to be launched in March 2026, Hossein Afshin, the Iranian Vice-President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, said during its launch in Tehran on Saturday.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran Distances Itself from Houthis as Its Terror Proxy Network Falters | Jerusalem Post
It appears that Iran may be distancing itself from the Houthis or at least trying to insulate itself from responses if the Houthis carry out attacks. Iran doesn’t seem to want to confront the US at this time. This also shows how the Iran proxy network that seemed so strong after the Hamas attack, and ran wild in the region for a year, now faces challenges. Its strength is also its weakness. It is too spread out, and Iran can’t protect the proxies.
Yemen's Houthis Won't 'Dial Down' Under US Pressure or Iranian Appeals | Reuters
Yemen's Houthis will not "dial down" their action against Israeli shipping in the Red Sea in response to U.S. military pressure or appeals from the group's allies such as Iran, the Yemeni militant group's foreign minister said. Two senior Iranian officials told Reuters that Iran had delivered a verbal message to the Houthi envoy in Tehran on Friday to cool tensions and that Iran's foreign minister asked Oman, which has mediated with the Houthis, to convey a similar message to the group when he visited Muscat on Sunday.
Iran Tells UN: Trump's Remarks Are Reckless and Provocative’ | Reuters
Iran told the United Nations Security Council on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials had made “reckless and provocative statements” that leveled “baseless accusations” and threatened the use of force against Tehran. “Iran strongly and categorically rejects any accusation on the violation of relevant Security Council resolutions on arms embargoes in Yemen or involvement in any destabilizing activities in the region,” Iran's U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani wrote in the letter, seen by Reuters.
HOMELAND SECURITY
Before being deported late last week, a Rhode Island doctor was questioned by US Customs and Border Protection agents at Logan Airport about photos on her phone of Iran’s supreme leader and of a leader of the terrorist group, Hezbollah, federal prosecutors wrote in documents filed in court on Monday. Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, a kidney transplant doctor and assistant professor at Brown Medicine and Rhode Island Hospital, traveled to Lebanon to see her parents but was prevented from re-entering the United States at the airport on Thursday evening and was later placed on a flight to Paris. According to court documents, in an interview with immigration officials Alawieh said she had attended the commemoration of the death of [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah during her trip, while she was waiting for a visa.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran Mandates Solar Panels in Government Offices to Tackle Energy Shortage | Iran International
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian announced that government offices and executive bodies will be required to install solar panels as part of efforts to address the country's energy shortages, state media reported Monday. The energy crisis, marked by widespread electricity shortages and gas deficits, has disrupted industries across the country since the past months. Aging infrastructure, international sanctions, and poor management have compounded the problem, leading to the shutdown of approximately 80 power plants.
RUSSIA, UKRAINE, & IRAN
Russia’s Drone Dominance Influences Iran’s Proxies to Attack Israel | Jerusalem Post
Russia acquired Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones early in the war in 2022 and used them to target Ukraine. These one-way attack drones were not a game changer. However, Russia’s use of them showed how Iranian-backed groups would use the same drones against Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7. That illustrates how what Russia is doing in Kursk may have ramifications for the Middle East.