Two teenagers who pledged allegiance to ISIS tried to detonate bombs outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday, hurling improvised explosive devices into a crowd of protesters. The bombs failed to go off. A five-count federal complaint was unsealed Monday afternoon, charging Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, with using a weapon of mass destruction while supporting a foreign terror group, among other charges.
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch was direct about what happened. She called it "ISIS-inspired terrorism" and made clear these were not toys or props.
"These were not hoax devices, nor smoke devices. It is, in fact, an improvised explosive device that could have caused serious injury or death."
The devices contained triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, an explosive compound known as the "Mother of Satan." Cops initially believed the devices were merely homemade smoke grenades. The FBI took over the investigation on Sunday and searched both suspects' homes in Bucks County, just outside Philadelphia.
According to the complaint, Balat allegedly told detectives he hoped the casualty count would surpass that of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. When informed that the attack killed three people, his response was chilling.
"No, even bigger. It was only three deaths."
That is the voice of someone who wanted a body count.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York City, first addressed the attack on Sunday, the New York Post reported. His statement opened not with the bombing attempt, not with the ISIS allegiance, not with the fact that two individuals tried to murder people outside his own residence. It opened with the protest.
"Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city's values and the unity that defines who we are."
The protest, organized by far-right agitator Jake Lang and dubbed "Stop the Islamification of NYC," was an anti-Muslim demonstration. Mamdani called it "a vile protest rooted in white supremacy." He said he found it "appalling" but would not waver in defending its right to occur. Fine. That's a reasonable position on free speech.
But notice the structure. The protest received four sentences of specific moral condemnation. The bombing attempt that followed got folded into the passive construction of "what followed was even more disturbing." The two men who allegedly tried to kill New Yorkers in the name of ISIS were described in the language of a parking violation.
"Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are."
No mention of ISIS. No mention of radical Islam. No mention of the ideology that animated the attack. Just "violence at a protest."
By Monday morning, when Mamdani delivered prepared remarks at a press conference, the federal complaint had not yet been unsealed, but the nature of the attack was already well understood. Tisch had already identified it as ISIS-inspired terrorism. Mamdani acknowledged the suspects threw devices at the crowd and that police had determined they were improvised explosive devices "made to injure, maim, or worse." He said the pair were "suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism."
"Let me say this plainly: Anyone who comes to New York City to bring violence to our streets will be held accountable in accordance with the law."
After the federal complaint was unsealed Monday afternoon, Mamdani issued another statement.
"Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi have been charged with committing a heinous act of terrorism and proclaiming their allegiance to ISIS. They should be held fully accountable for their actions."
He managed to say ISIS. He managed "heinous." He managed "fully accountable." What he did not manage, across three separate statements over three days, was to name the ideology. Not once did the words "radical Islam" or "Islamic extremism" cross his lips. He dodged questions on Monday. He treated the ideological motivation like furniture in a room he was trying not to bump into.
Consider what Mamdani was willing to name and what he wasn't:
The mayor had no trouble diagnosing the ideology of the protest. He had every word he needed for that. But when two ISIS supporters allegedly tried to blow people up outside his home, ideology suddenly became unspeakable. The specificity vanished. "Terrorism" stood alone, scrubbed of its modifier, as if the attack emerged from nowhere in particular.
This is a familiar pattern in progressive politics. Hate has a name when it comes from the right. When it comes wrapped in a crescent, it becomes "violence" or "extremism," stripped of origin, floating free of any ideology anyone might be expected to confront.
One detail that deserves attention: Mamdani was not home when the bombs were thrown at his residence on Saturday. He and his wife spent the day at the New York City Sign Museum in Brooklyn. There is nothing wrong with a mayor being away from Gracie Mansion. But the fact that ISIS-aligned attackers targeted the home of America's first Muslim mayor, and that mayor then declined to name the ideology behind the attack, tells you something about the distorted incentives of progressive identity politics.
Mamdani acknowledged as much himself, noting that "anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the 1 million or so Muslim New Yorkers." He's right about that. And one of the most corrosive forms of that bigotry is the assumption that Muslim communities cannot withstand honest conversation about extremism within their own ranks. The refusal to name radical Islam doesn't protect Muslim New Yorkers. It insults them by implying they can't distinguish between their faith and its most violent distortions.
Mamdani said the right things about accountability. He said the suspects should be "held fully accountable." He said New York would "not tolerate terrorism or violence." These are fine sentences. They are also the bare minimum expected of any mayor whose city was just targeted by ISIS supporters carrying bombs nicknamed the Mother of Satan.
The question isn't whether Mamdani condemned the attack. He did. The question is why the condemnation was so carefully hollowed out. You cannot fight what you refuse to name. You cannot lead a city through a threat you will only describe in the vaguest possible terms while reserving your sharpest language for the protest that preceded it.
Two men came to New York City to kill in the name of ISIS. The bombs didn't go off. Next time, they might. New Yorkers deserve a mayor who will say so plainly, all of it, including the part that makes progressive coalition politics uncomfortable.
An explosion rocked the area outside the U.S. Embassy in Oslo early Sunday morning, and Norwegian police say it was no accident. Investigators believe the embassy was the target.
Oslo police received reports of a "loud bang" around 1 a.m. local time. No injuries were reported, but local media reported minor damage to an entrance of the embassy, and people nearby said the street was blanketed in thick smoke following the blast.
At a news conference Sunday, Oslo police representative Frode Larsen confirmed the explosion was caused by "some sort of incendiary device." Police are now searching for the perpetrators and their motive, and are seeking to talk to witnesses.
Norway's minister of justice and public security, Astri Aas-Hansen, weighed in with a statement that carried the right tone but offered little in the way of specifics, according to Breitbart:
"This is an unacceptable incident that is being treated with the utmost seriousness."
She added that police are investigating the case with "significant resources" and that nothing indicates the situation poses any danger to the public. That's a peculiar assurance to offer when investigators haven't identified who detonated an incendiary device outside a foreign embassy in your capital city.
PST, Norway's police security service, called in additional personnel following the incident, but has not changed the country's terror threat level. That decision may prove correct, but it also signals that Norwegian authorities are treating this, at least publicly, as an isolated event rather than part of a broader threat.
The U.S. Embassy in Oslo referred media queries to the U.S. State Department, which did not immediately return a request for comment. Oslo police also declined to respond. Other details were not available.
That wall of silence is notable. An incendiary device detonated outside a U.S. Embassy, and neither the host country's police nor the American diplomatic apparatus had anything public to say beyond the initial statements.
An attack on a U.S. Embassy, anywhere in the world, is an attack on American sovereignty. It doesn't matter whether the damage was minor or the hour was late. Embassies are extensions of the nation itself under international law. Someone placed an incendiary device outside one and detonated it. That is an act of hostility against the United States.
The question now is whether this was the work of a lone agitator, an organized group, or something connected to the broader wave of anti-American sentiment that has simmered across parts of Europe. Norway is one of America's closest NATO allies. If someone feels emboldened enough to strike a U.S. Embassy in Oslo, the security posture at American diplomatic facilities across the continent deserves immediate scrutiny.
Anti-American protests have become fashionable in certain European circles, where activists wrap hostility toward the United States in the language of social justice or foreign policy dissent. Whether this incident connects to that strain of politics or to something else entirely remains unknown. But the timing and the target speak louder than any motive investigators have yet to identify.
Norwegian authorities say they're throwing significant resources at the investigation. Good. The test now is whether those resources produce arrests, or whether this gets quietly filed away as an unsolved incident with no injuries and minor property damage.
A broken window at an embassy is not a minor crime. It is a diplomatic provocation. The speed and seriousness of Norway's investigation will say more about the state of the Western alliance than any joint communiqué ever could.
Someone detonated a bomb outside an American embassy in a NATO ally's capital. The smoke has cleared. The questions have not.
An improvised explosive device was hurled at a protest outside the New York City mayor's residence, and the NYPD has confirmed it was not a firecracker. Two men, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, were arrested on the scene and remain in custody.
NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced the findings after the NYPD Bomb Squad completed a preliminary analysis of the device:
"The NYPD Bomb Squad has conducted a preliminary analysis of a device that was ignited and deployed at a protest yesterday and has determined that it is not a hoax device or a smoke bomb."
"It is, in fact, an improvised explosive device that could have caused serious injury or death."
A second device is still being analyzed by the Bomb Squad. Someone built two of these. Someone brought them to a public demonstration outside the mayor's home and detonated at least one.
Fox News's Bill Melugin, citing three federal law enforcement sources, reported that the two suspects were arrested for throwing an IED "after yelling 'Allahu Akbar'" and that both are believed to be U.S. citizens.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded on X. His opening line was not about the bomb. It was about the protest:
"Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism."
He followed with boilerplate about city values before eventually arriving at the explosive device, calling it "even more disturbing." He then stated:
"Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are."
Read the sequence again. A real IED was detonated at a public gathering outside his own residence. Two suspects shouted "Allahu Akbar" before throwing it. And the mayor's first instinct was to label the protest organizer a "white supremacist" and frame the demonstration itself as the primary offense.
The explosive came second. Literally.
According to Breitbart, NBC News initially reported that "two men were taken into custody after at least one of two devices was ignited during an anti-Islam demonstration," adding that "it was unclear at the time what the devices were and whether they were a danger to the public."
It is now very clear. The NYPD has confirmed the device was a genuine IED capable of killing people. The ambiguity NBC offered its readers was not caution. It was a cushion. When the suspects yell "Allahu Akbar" while throwing a bomb at a protest, and the immediate media impulse is to wonder aloud whether the devices were really dangerous, something other than journalism is at work.
Imagine for one moment the reverse scenario. Imagine a bomb had been thrown at a pro-Islam rally by someone shouting a slogan associated with white nationalism. There would be no hemming about whether the device posed a danger. There would be no leading with the counterprotesters' ideology. The story would be the bomb, the suspects, and the motive. Wall-to-wall coverage. Presidential statements. Hashtags.
Instead, we got a mayor who used the attack as an opportunity to editorialize about the people who were attacked.
This is not complicated. Two men allegedly built at least two explosive devices, brought them to a lawful protest, and detonated one while invoking a phrase associated with Islamist violence across the globe. The NYPD confirmed the device was real and lethal. No charges have been publicly announced yet, and neither suspect's background has been fully detailed.
But the political infrastructure of New York City activated exactly as it always does: minimize the act, maximize the grievance against those targeted. Mamdani didn't name the suspects. He named Jake Lang. He didn't describe the bomb first. He described the protest first. The framing tells you everything about the priorities.
Conservatives have watched this playbook run for years. When political violence targets the right, the conversation immediately pivots to whether the victims deserved it, whether their speech was too provocative, and whether they bear some moral responsibility for the rage directed at them. The actual violence becomes a footnote appended to a lecture.
Commissioner Tisch, to her credit, was direct. She confirmed the IED, named the suspects, and disclosed the ongoing analysis of the second device. That is what accountability from law enforcement looks like: facts, names, findings.
The question now is whether the legal system treats this with the gravity the NYPD's own assessment demands. An IED at a public protest is not a misdemeanor dust-up. It is not civil disobedience. It is not an expression of frustration. It is, by any honest definition, an act of political violence. The charges, when they come, will tell us whether New York's prosecutors agree.
Someone tried to kill people at a protest outside the mayor's house. The mayor's response was to call the protesters bigots. That tells you everything you need to know about who runs New York City and what they're willing to tolerate.
Tyler Jaggers, a U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer stationed in Astoria, Oregon, died early Friday morning, roughly a week after he was critically injured during a medical evacuation about 140 miles off Cape Flattery on the coast of northern Washington near the Canadian border.
The Oregonian reported that the Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue Swimmer Association announced the death. Jaggers had been on life support since the Feb. 27 incident, first at Victoria General Hospital in British Columbia, then at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma. His parents were by his side.
The Coast Guard posthumously awarded Jaggers the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Details remain limited. The Coast Guard did not specify what happened, citing an ongoing investigation.
Rick McElrath, board president and founder of the Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue Swimmer Association, said Jaggers fell as he was being lowered to the deck from a helicopter. The mission was a medical evacuation for a stroke victim.
That's as much as the public knows right now. A young man trained to jump out of helicopters into open ocean so that strangers might live was lowered toward a vessel deck, and something went catastrophically wrong.
The investigation will eventually produce a report. It will not produce an outcome that changes anything for the people who loved Tyler Jaggers.
On Thursday, one day before the announcement of his death, Jaggers' partner Cassandra Weaver posted on social media with a story that distills the cost of this loss into something no official report ever could.
"What I didn't realize was that he had recently told some of his closest buddies that he was getting ready to propose."
"So yesterday, surrounded by the people who love him most, his family carried out the proposal on Tyler's behalf."
Weaver said she always told him she didn't care if he proposed with a Ring Pop.
"I said yes."
There is nothing to editorialize about that. It simply is what it is.
Oregon Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, shared her support for Jaggers' family during Friday's Senate session, honoring other rescue swimmers and the risks they take in the process.
"Rescue swimmers train relentlessly and deploy into the most demanding environments with a single purpose: to save others."
"Colleagues, this is personal for many in my district and for my office. Along Oregon's coast we know firsthand that if not for U.S. Coast Guard and the bravery of swimmers like Tyler, many more lives would have been lost at sea. Our thoughts are with his family, his air crew at station Astoria and the entire United States rescue swimmers' brotherhood during this incredibly difficult time."
Weber told Jaggers' family directly that "Oregon stands behind you" and that they are "not alone."
Jaggers joined the Coast Guard in January 2022 and arrived at the Astoria Air Station in April 2024. He was not a decades-long veteran coasting toward a pension.
He was early in a career defined by one of the most physically and mentally punishing specialties in the U.S. military. Coast Guard rescue swimmers are volunteers within an already volunteer force. They choose the water. They choose the storm. They do it knowing the math doesn't always work.
Stories like this rarely command the national attention they deserve. There is no political controversy to fuel a cable news cycle. No viral moment. No faction to blame. Just a man who trained to save lives, deployed into danger to do exactly that, and didn't come home.
Americans talk frequently about honoring service. It is easy to do when it costs nothing. The harder form of honor is attention: knowing the name Tyler Jaggers, understanding what rescue swimmers do, recognizing that the Coast Guard operates in conditions most people will never see and never think about.
The investigation into what happened on Feb. 27 will continue. The Distinguished Flying Cross now bears his name. His fiancée said yes to a question he never got to ask.
That is the price, and someone pays it every time.
Counter-terrorism police in London arrested David Taylor, the husband of Labour MP Joani Reid, on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Two other men, a 68-year-old in Powys, Wales, and a 43-year-old in Pontyclun, Wales, were arrested as part of the same operation. All three arrests stem from what police described as a "proactive investigation" into national security offences related to China.
Taylor is no fringe figure. He is a former special adviser to Labour peer Peter Hain, a lobbyist with Earthcott, a former director of policy and programmes at Asia House, and widely connected within the Labour Party. His wife sits on the home affairs committee.
Let that distinction register: the spouse of a lawmaker with access to sensitive home affairs information stands accused of working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service. And not just any foreign intelligence service. China's.
Security minister Dan Jarvis confirmed the arrests in a Commons statement and tied them directly to Beijing's operations on British soil, The Guardian reported:
"I can also confirm this relates to foreign interference targeting UK democracy."
Jarvis said British officials had formally protested to their Chinese counterparts in both London and Beijing. He also offered a warning that extended well beyond Parliament's walls:
"All of those who are involved in the wider political ecosystem are in play here, and that is an important message for people in this house and outside of this place to understand."
That phrase, "wider political ecosystem," deserves attention. It means lobbyists, advisers, researchers, think tank operatives, and anyone orbiting elected officials. The implication is that China's espionage apparatus is not narrowly targeting classified documents. It is cultivating influence across the entire infrastructure of British governance.
Conservative MP Greg Stafford did not waste time drawing the obvious connection, noting in the Commons on Wednesday that the MP whose husband had been arrested "sits on a select committee that would have information which is sensitive, maybe even secret."
Joani Reid issued a statement distancing herself from the investigation entirely:
"I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law."
She went further, insisting she had never visited China, never spoken on China-related matters in the Commons, never asked a question on China-related matters, and, as far as she was aware, never met any Chinese businesses, diplomats, or government employees while serving as an MP. She also said she had never raised any concern with ministers on behalf of Chinese interests, "even coincidentally."
Reid also demanded that media organisations leave her children out of the coverage, stating that neither she nor her children is part of the investigation.
The denial is comprehensive. Whether it holds up will depend on what counter-terrorism detectives found during searches at residential addresses in London, East Kilbride, and Cardiff.
These arrests land just six months after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges of spying for China against two other men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry. Cash had been a researcher specializing in China who worked for Conservative MP Alicia Kearns. Both men denied the charges. They had been accused of passing on information about Westminster that was ultimately sent to Cai Qi, a member of China's ruling Politburo.
The CPS initially said only that the "evidential standard" was no longer met. The charges vanished quietly. No public accounting. No explanation of what went wrong in the prosecution. And now, half a year later, a new set of arrests on nearly identical grounds.
The pattern is not subtle:
Commander Helen Flanagan, the head of counter-terrorism policing for the Met, acknowledged the broader trend:
"We have seen a significant increase in our casework relating to national security in recent years and we continue to work extremely closely with our partners to help keep the country safe and take action to disrupt malign activity where we suspect it."
She added that while these are "serious matters," police do not believe there is any imminent or direct threat to the public.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has come under pressure over his decision to visit China and attempt to improve relations with Beijing. He has also been criticized for allowing a Chinese "mega embassy" near the City of London to proceed, claiming that security concerns had been addressed.
Those assurances look considerably thinner today. Starmer's government is simultaneously protesting Chinese espionage through diplomatic channels and courting Chinese investment through diplomatic visits. The contradiction is not a matter of nuance. It is a matter of seriousness.
You cannot formally protest a nation's intelligence operations against your democracy while rolling out the red carpet for its diplomats and developers. Or rather, you can, but no one on either side of that equation will take the protest seriously.
Jarvis struck the right tone in his statement:
"If there is proven evidence of attempts by China to interfere with UK sovereign affairs, we will impose severe consequences and hold all actors involved to account."
But Labour's track record on following through with "severe consequences" against Beijing is nonexistent. Words without enforcement are invitations, not warnings.
What should alarm conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic is not just the arrests themselves but the ecosystem that made them necessary. China does not recruit random strangers. It recruits people with access, influence, and proximity to power. Former advisers. Lobbyists. Researchers. People whose professional lives are built on knowing the right people and being in the right rooms.
The two unidentified men arrested alongside Taylor are understood to be former Labour advisers as well. Three arrests. All connected to the governing party. All allegedly tied to Chinese intelligence.
Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle confirmed that none of the arrested men held parliamentary passes granting access to the Westminster estate. That is a small mercy, not a clean bill of health.
The investigation continues. The searches continue. And the question that hangs over British politics is no longer whether China has penetrated the political class. It is how deep the roots go.
A truck hauling 378,000 tins of Tucker Carlson's ALP nicotine pouches was stolen from a logistics facility in Southern California last week, and the company is now offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the shipment or the capture of those responsible.
The heist targeted a load of ALP "Drifters," the brand's latest product. Tracking showed the truck heading east until all contact was lost. The shipment, described as worth millions, is still nowhere to be found.
An ALP spokesperson confirmed the theft in a post on X:
"Unfortunately, this is true. A truck carrying ALP Drifters was stolen. $100,000 reward announced. Details coming shortly."
The details that have emerged so far read less like a smash-and-grab and more like a carefully planned operation. The driver who picked up the truck flashed what appeared to be authentic credentials at the logistics facility. Nothing raised alarms at the time. As the New York Post reported, it was only after the truck disappeared from tracking systems that the scope of the theft became clear.
The driver's true identity remains a mystery. Investigators are now probing whether the truck's location system was faked, a tactic that would suggest a level of sophistication well beyond opportunistic theft.
No law enforcement agency has been publicly identified as leading the investigation, and no charges have been filed as of the available reporting.
If you had to pick a state where a multimillion-dollar cargo hijacking would barely raise an eyebrow, California would be at the top of the list. The state has spent years cultivating a legal environment where property crime is treated as a social inevitability rather than something to be aggressively prosecuted. Proposition 47 reclassified a range of theft offenses as misdemeanors. Progressive district attorneys across the state have spent their tenures finding reasons not to charge. Organized retail theft rings operate with a brazenness that would be unthinkable in states where consequences still exist.
Cargo theft fits neatly into this ecosystem. Southern California's sprawling logistics infrastructure, with its ports, warehouses, and interstate corridors, makes it a prime target. When the legal system signals that property crime is a low priority, criminals take the invitation.
None of this means the ALP heist was inevitable. But it happened in a jurisdiction that has done remarkably little to make such crimes difficult or costly for the people who commit them.
ALP, for its part, is not treating this as a fatal blow. The company's statement carried the tone of a brand that plans to push through the disruption rather than be defined by it:
"And don't worry – Drifters is still coming. Delayed? Yes. Stopped? Not even close."
That posture matters. Carlson has built ALP into a consumer brand that draws heavily from his media audience, a base that tends to reward defiance in the face of setback. A theft that would send a typical startup into crisis management becomes, for a brand with this kind of cultural positioning, an opportunity to demonstrate resilience.
The $100,000 reward is significant. It signals that Carlson and ALP are not content to let the investigation run its course quietly. They are putting real money behind recovery and accountability, effectively crowdsourcing leads in a way that mirrors the direct-to-audience model that built the brand in the first place.
The immediate question is whether investigators can determine how the driver obtained credentials convincing enough to walk out of a logistics facility with 378,000 tins of product. If the truck's GPS was spoofed, that points to planning and technical capability that narrows the suspect pool considerably. This was not a crime of opportunity.
The broader question is whether anyone in California's law enforcement or political apparatus treats this with the seriousness it deserves. A multimillion-dollar cargo theft is a felony by any standard. But in a state where shoplifters walk out of retail stores on camera without consequence, the incentive structure for organized theft has been broken for years.
Someone in Los Angeles has 378,000 tins of nicotine pouches and thinks they got away with it. Carlson is betting $100,000 that they didn't.
The Iranian operative who orchestrated the plot to assassinate President Donald Trump is dead. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that U.S. and Israeli forces tracked down and eliminated the man responsible for directing the Islamic Republic's most brazen act of aggression against an American leader.
Hegseth delivered the news during a morning debrief on Operation Epic Fury at the Pentagon.
"The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed."
Hegseth did not publicly identify the target. Israeli media named him as Rahman Mokadam, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' special operations division. The strike reportedly occurred during the final days of the 2024 election campaign, meaning the operation was kept quiet for months before Hegseth chose to reveal it.
Hegseth was careful not to declare victory prematurely, calling it "not a mission accomplished moment." But he made the larger point unmistakable.
"Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh."
The scope of Iran's assassination conspiracy remains staggering even in summary. The New York Post reported that according to federal prosecutors, the IRGC tasked Afghan national Farhad Shakeri in September 2024 to "focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating" Trump. Shakeri, who emigrated to the U.S. as a child and was deported in 2008 after serving a 14-year prison sentence for robbery, had become a willing asset of the Iranian regime.
The timeline was urgent. On October 7, 2024, an Iranian official told Shakeri to have a plan in place to kill Trump within seven days. When Shakeri indicated the operation would cost a "huge" amount of money, his IRGC handler was unmoved. The response, according to court documents: "We already spent a lot of money … so the money's not an issue."
Tehran officials reportedly calculated that if Trump lost the election, it would then be easier to assassinate him. Either way, they wanted him dead. This was not a contingency plan. It was a standing order.
Shakeri didn't build his network through intelligence tradecraft. He built it in a U.S. prison cell. He recruited Brooklyn native Carlisle Rivera and Staten Islander Jonathan Loadholt, men he met while incarcerated, to serve as hitmen on American soil.
Before the Trump plot accelerated, Shakeri initially directed Rivera and Loadholt toward another target: Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American activist and journalist who had been an outspoken critic of the Tehran regime and had been targeted for assassination in the past. Iran offered Shakeri $1.5 million to kill Alinejad. Shakeri promised Rivera and Loadholt $100,000.
The two men surveilled Alinejad's Brooklyn home and planned to watch her speak at Fairfield University in Connecticut. They pursued her for nine months. Rivera, in a phone conversation captured by investigators, offered this assessment of his target: "This b—h is hard to catch, bro."
The charges eventually caught up with them:
Beyond the reach of American courts, but apparently not beyond the reach of American and Israeli forces.
Iran's obsession with killing Trump did not begin with the 2024 campaign. It stretches back to 2020, when President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, head of the IRGC's elite Quds Force. Tehran never forgave and never moved on. In 2022, a video animation posted on then-Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's website carried the message "Revenge is Definite."
That revenge campaign spanned assassination plots on American soil, the recruitment of convicted felons as contract killers, and the mobilization of IRGC special operations resources against a sitting and former president. The regime wagered it could strike at the heart of American politics without consequence.
Khamenei himself was killed in strikes on February 28, alongside dozens of other top Iranian officials. The IRGC operative who ran the Trump assassination unit is now dead. The foot soldiers who stalked an Iranian American journalist in Brooklyn are headed to federal prison for years.
Trump, in characteristic fashion, did not mince words about the outcome. He told ABC News' Jonathan Karl simply: "They tried twice. Well, I got him first." In a separate interview with NewsNation this past January, he said he had left instructions about what would happen if Iran's plot succeeded.
"We're going to blow the — the whole country is going to get blown up."
For years, the foreign policy establishment treated Iran as a rational actor that could be managed through negotiation, incentive structures, and strategic patience. The assassination plots against Trump and Alinejad tell a different story. This is a regime that recruited ex-convicts from American prisons to carry out contract killings on U.S. soil. A regime whose supreme leader posted animated fantasies about revenge on his personal website. A regime that told its operatives money was no object when the target was an American president.
Rational actors don't behave this way. Regimes that believe they can act without consequence do.
The elimination of Mokadam, the death of Khamenei, and the ongoing prosecution of Iran's recruited assets on American soil represent a comprehensive answer to that belief. Every layer of the conspiracy, from the IRGC handler in Tehran to the hitmen in Brooklyn, has now faced consequences.
Iran wanted to prove that no one was beyond its reach. It proved the opposite.
More than 9,000 Americans have returned safely to the United States from the Middle East since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran over the weekend, President Trump announced Tuesday on Truth Social.
The number reflects a massive logistical mobilization. In just days, the federal government coordinated charter flights, commercial bookings, and a round-the-clock State Department task force to extract American citizens from an active conflict zone. Trump urged any U.S. citizens still in the region who want to come home to register with the State Department immediately.
"We are already chartering flights, free of charge, and booking commercial options, which we expect will become increasingly available as time goes on."
That's the president speaking directly to Americans abroad, with a concrete offer attached. Not a press release laundered through three layers of bureaucratic hedging. A direct message with a direct plan.
The sequence of events moved fast, The Hill reported. On Friday, the State Department authorized the departure of all nonemergency government workers and their families from Israel through an updated travel advisory. Early Saturday morning, the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran as part of a joint operation dubbed "Operation Epic Fury," killing Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
By Monday, the situation had escalated enough that the State Department issued an urgent warning for Americans to leave the Middle East entirely. Mora Namdar, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, posted on X with unmistakable clarity:
"The @SecRubio @StateDept urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks."
That same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video on X addressing affected U.S. citizens and sharing resources. Rubio said the department authorized a 24/7 task force to assist Americans in the region.
"To all American citizens in the Middle East: Your safety and security is our number one priority."
By Tuesday, more than 9,000 Americans were already home.
The contrast with past evacuations hardly needs stating, but it's worth pausing on what competent execution actually looks like. Friday: advisories go out. Saturday: strikes begin. Monday: urgent warnings, task force activated, cabinet-level officials personally addressing citizens on social media. Tuesday: thousands already stateside.
That's four days. No stranded civilians left on a tarmac with no plan. No weeks of ambiguity while bureaucrats debated messaging. The machinery of government moved at the speed the situation demanded.
Trump's message to remaining Americans was characteristically direct. Register with the State Department. The department will identify where you are and provide travel options. The flights are free. The message carried the weight of someone who understood that Americans abroad during a military operation aren't an afterthought. They're the first obligation.
The updated travel advisory from Friday made clear that conditions on the ground remain fluid. The U.S. Embassy reserved the right to further restrict or prohibit government employees and their family members from traveling to certain areas of Israel, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The advisory noted that such restrictions could come "without advance notice."
The advisory also carried a pointed recommendation for private citizens:
"Persons may wish to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available."
That language is diplomatic, but the meaning is plain. Commercial options exist now. They may not tomorrow. The window is open, and no one is guaranteeing how long it stays that way.
Americans still in the region who wish to return must register with the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov. Trump emphasized that the State Department will locate registrants and arrange their travel home.
Operation Epic Fury represents a defining moment, not just militarily but in how a government treats its own citizens during wartime. The elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the joint U.S.-Israel strikes reshaped the strategic landscape of the Middle East in a matter of hours. That kind of action creates consequences that ripple outward, and the first people caught in those ripples are always civilians.
The 9,000 Americans who made it home didn't get lucky. They got a government that planned the extraction alongside the operation, not as an afterthought weeks later. The charter flights were already in motion. The task force was already staffed. The communication channels were already live.
Nine thousand Americans, home in four days. That's not a talking point. That's a logistics operation executed under pressure with real lives on the line.
The ones still there have a number, a website, and a secretary of state who went on camera to tell them they matter. Now it's on them to register and get to a departure point.
The door is open. The flights are free. The clock is ticking.
A United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner bound for New Jersey turned back to Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after an engine caught fire shortly into the flight, forcing 256 passengers and 12 crew members to evacuate via emergency slides and airstairs.
United Flight 2127 departed LAX around 10:15 a.m. and reversed course roughly an hour later due to what the Federal Aviation Administration described as "a left engine issue." Video footage from the scene showed smoke pouring from one of the engines as firefighters blasted water inside the aircraft.
The FAA confirmed the basics to Fox News Digital:
"United Airlines Flight 2127 took off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) around 10:15 a.m. before turning around an hour later because of a left engine issue."
The agency did not specify the nature of the engine problem. The FAA said the incident is under investigation.
United Airlines, for its part, kept the language clinical. The airline told Fox News Digital that the flight "safely returned to Los Angeles to address an issue with one of the engines." Customers deplaned via slides and airstairs and were bused to the terminal.
United also praised its crew:
"We are grateful to our pilots and flight attendants for their quick actions to keep our customers safe."
Note the framing. An engine fire dramatic enough to require emergency slides and a fleet of firefighters hosing down a widebody jet gets reduced to "an issue with one of the engines." That's corporate communications doing exactly what it's designed to do: flatten the severity until the lawyers and investigators finish their work.
A spokesperson for LAX declined to comment entirely, referring all inquiries to United. Fox News Digital reached out to the Los Angeles Fire Department but had not received a response.
Nobody died. That matters, and it should be said plainly before anything else. The pilots executed the emergency return. The crew got passengers off the aircraft. The system, in this instance, worked the way it is supposed to work under pressure.
But "the system worked" is not the same as "there is no problem." The traveling public has watched a steady drumbeat of aviation incidents over the past couple of years: near-misses on runways, doors blowing off fuselages, and mechanical failures forcing diversions. Each one gets its own investigation, its own corporate statement praising the crew, its own quiet fade from the news cycle. The pattern, though, is harder to ignore than any single event.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, one of Boeing's flagship widebody jets and a workhorse for long-haul routes. The FAA's investigation will determine whether this was an isolated mechanical failure, a maintenance issue, or something with wider implications for the fleet. Until that investigation concludes, speculation is just speculation.
What isn't speculation is that 268 people boarded a routine transcontinental flight Monday morning and ended up evacuating down emergency slides surrounded by fire trucks. They deserve answers, not just gratitude.
The FAA investigation will proceed on its own timeline. The agency has been under scrutiny for its oversight capacity, and incidents like this one only sharpen the focus. Whether this amounts to a one-off mechanical event or feeds into a larger accountability story depends entirely on what investigators find.
For the 256 passengers who started their Monday expecting to land in New Jersey and instead walked down inflatable slides onto a Los Angeles tarmac, the investigation is academic. The experience is not. An engine fire at altitude is the kind of thing that stays with you long after the airline rebooks your flight.
The crew brought them home. Now the question is why they had to.
President Trump on Tuesday declared that Iran's air defense, Air Force, Navy, and leadership "is gone," dismissing Tehran's belated attempts at diplomacy in the midst of a joint American and Israeli strike campaign on the Iranian capital.
Iranian leadership "wants to talk," Trump said. His response was blunt: "It's too late."
The strikes, carried out jointly by the United States and Israel, have targeted Tehran's military and political infrastructure with devastating effect. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that 49 of the most senior Iranian regime leaders have been killed, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Leavitt framed the campaign in terms no one could misunderstand:
"Killing terrorists is good for America."
Trump made clear in a New York Post interview that he is not ruling out any option, including ground forces. In a political culture where presidents reflexively promise "no boots on the ground" before a conflict even begins, Trump refused the ritual.
"I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, 'There will be no boots on the ground.' I don't say it."
Instead, he offered a characteristically pragmatic assessment, saying he "probably doesn't need them" but would use them "if they were necessary." That's not saber-rattling. That's refusing to hand the enemy a playbook.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reinforced the posture at a Monday press briefing, calling it "foolish" to telegraph "what we will or will not do." For years, American adversaries benefited from administrations that pre-announced constraints, turned military planning into a public seminar, and signaled hesitation before the first sortie launched. That era is over.
Trump also noted the United States has "the capability to go far longer" than the four-to-five-week time frame projected for military operations against Iran. The message to Tehran: the clock is yours, and it's running out.
In an interview with The Atlantic on Sunday, Trump revealed that Iran had reached out and that he had agreed to talk. But the window, he made clear, had already narrowed to a slit.
"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."
This is the central dynamic that critics of this administration consistently fail to grasp. Strength creates diplomacy. The Iranian regime did not suddenly discover a desire for dialogue out of philosophical reflection. They discovered it because their Supreme Leader is dead, their senior military and political figures are being systematically eliminated, and their air defenses no longer exist in any meaningful sense.
For four decades, the theocratic regime in Tehran operated under the assumption that no American president would ever follow through. Sanctions would tighten and loosen. Diplomats would shuttle between capitals. Think tanks would publish papers. And the regime would continue funding proxies, enriching uranium, and threatening its neighbors while Western capitals debated "proportionality."
That calculus just collapsed.
The joint nature of this operation deserves attention. American and Israeli forces striking in coordination against Iranian targets represents a level of allied resolve that the regime's planners likely war-gamed but never truly expected to face. The elimination of 49 senior regime figures is not a pinprick. It is a decapitation.
Reports and imagery from Monday showed plumes of smoke rising over Tehran. Separately, an AP photo from Sunday, March 1, 2026, captured damage at a warehouse in Sharjah City in the United Arab Emirates following reports of Iranian strikes in Dubai, a reminder that the regime was lashing out even as its own infrastructure crumbled around it.
This is what happens when a rogue state exhausts the patience of serious people. Iran had every opportunity to come to the table. Trump said it himself: what was being asked was "very practical and easy to do." They chose defiance. They chose wrong.
There will be no shortage of voices in the coming days urging restraint, calling for off-ramps, and warning about escalation. These are the same voices that spent years crafting a nuclear deal that enriched the regime while buying nothing permanent. The same voices that treated Iranian proxies as a regional nuisance rather than an existential threat. The same voices that confused process with progress.
The results of this operation speak in a language that doesn't require translation. Iran's military capacity is degraded. Its leadership structure is shattered. And its surviving officials are now asking to talk.
They should have called sooner.