Iran-backed Hezbollah postpones conflict compensation

"My suggestion is different. Instead of Palestinians, expel Israelis and send them to Greenland so they can kill two birds with one stone," Araghchi said in an exclusive interview with Sky News.

President Trump, who initially suggested acquiring Greenland in his first term, has doubled-down on the claim since returning to office.

On Saturday, the US President disclosed that he had conferred with Jordan's King Abdullah II about building housing to move over 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring nations. He also said he planned to address the same issue with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday.

The proposal was preemptively rejected by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), which said it would violate its “red lines”.

"You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” the US President also told reporters over the weekend.

The comments come after a ceasefire deal and hostage release negotiated jointly by the incoming Trump administration and the Biden administration between Israel and Hamas.

Nuclear negotiations would be 'more challenging' than before

Addressing the possibility of negotiations over its nuclear program, Foreign Minister Araghchi told SKY News that while Tehran is willing to hear President Trump out, reaching an agreement will be far more challenging than in 2018, when the original nuclear deal was finalized.

"The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time," he told SKY News. "Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence… We haven't heard anything but the 'nice' word, and this is obviously not enough."

This follows President Trump’s earlier remark that it would be "nice" if the nuclear crisis could be resolved without escalating further—and without the need for Israel to launch military strikes against targets in Iran.

Iran's Foreign Minister told SKY News that any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would trigger an immediate response, calling it "crazy" for Israel and the US to take such action.

According to a joint statement by Israel police and Shin Bet, the two suspects had been lured by social media, as seen in previous cases.

"They understood that they were in contact with an Iranian operator, based, among other things, on their media publications, which revealed at the time the arrest and interrogation of Israeli citizens who were in contact with Iranian intelligence elements and carried out similar missions for them," the statement said.

The pair have been named as Yuri Eliaspov and Georgi Andreev, residents of Krayot in northern Israel.

Eliaspov, the main suspect, admitted that he sent his Iranian operator a video he recorded of the Iron Dome operating system. "I got into a difficult financial situation,” he told prosecutors.

Iranian spy plots in Israel increased 400% last year in the wake of the Gaza war, with dozens of cases in Israel foiled involving dozens more Israeli citizens. Some of the most serious included plots to murder the likes of Israel's Prime Minister and Defense Minister.

Superintendent Sarit Peretz, an investigation officer in the National Unit for the Investigation of Serious and International Crime in Lahav 433, said in a statement: "Yuri Eliaspov is charged with the offense of aiding the enemy in war, the most serious offense in the law book, the penalty for which is life imprisonment or death,” though Israel has only enacted the death penalty twice since its founding in 1948.

“Anyone who received Yuri's video [of the Iron Dome] and understands these systems could act against the State of Israel, which is very dangerous. The video contains very sensitive information," she added.

She said that Eliaspov claims only to have sent part of the video and not all of it. “Even the part he says he sent contains great danger,” she said.

Israel's Iron Dome air defense system is 90 percent effective and has protected the country from thousands of missile, rocket and drone attacks from Iran and its allies around the region such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Asher Ben-Artzi, the former head of Israel’s Interpol, said the cases show a constant pattern in how Iranian intelligence is working to recruit Israeli citizens.

“They manage to recruit Israelis, mainly from the weakest strata of society, to whom they promise to make easy and quick money. This affair that has now been revealed was a great success for them after they managed to locate a reservist stationed in a sensitive unit and the assessment of the security officials is that the information they provided did indeed cause damage,” he told Iran International.

“The fact that they gained access to IDF soldiers, even in reserve service, is very worrying.”

The two were lured like others in recent months, by initially being asked to spray ‘children of Ruhollah’ graffiti in Tel Aviv, referring to the original founder of the Islamic Republic.

Eliaspov then shared the opportunity with his friend Andreev, and convinced him it was easy money.

By the time he was caught, Eliaspov had earned $2,500, while Andreev only $50. Both have admitted they are guilty of the charges and remain in custody until the next hearing on Friday in Haifa.

The pair began communicating with the agent in late September and have been under investigation for two weeks. They were both discharged immediately from Israeli military service.

Handala, an Iranian cyber group linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel.

Additionally, the group used another system belonging to the same company to send tens of thousands of threatening text messages to Israeli citizens.

Israel's National Cyber Directorate confirmed the breach and is working with the affected company and the Ministry of Education to address the situation.

"Citizens who received these messages are advised to block the sender and disregard the message, as it poses no harm to mobile devices," the directorate said.

Kan, Israel's public broadcaster, reported that the affected systems have now been disconnected from the wider network, with the unnamed private company responsible for the compromised units saying that it is taking steps to resolve the issue and enhance its security measures.

Last April, a day after Iran's first-ever direct military strike against Israel, the Iranian-linked hacker group Handala claimed to have breached Israel's radar systems and sent hundreds of thousands of threatening text messages to Israeli citizens.

In September, the group claimed it had successfully breached the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, alleging the theft of 197 gigabytes of data.

The hackers also published around 30 photos they claimed were taken inside the center, along with screenshots allegedly showing the names of nuclear scientists involved in the facility's particle accelerator project.

In response, the Israeli prime minister's office, speaking on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, denied the authenticity of the images. "Following a thorough examination, the images and blueprint do not belong to any of its facilities," the statement said.

According to cybersecurity expert Nariman Gharib, the group Handala Hack, Karma Below and Homeland Justice were created and are operated by a cyber unit within the counter-cyber threat division (CT) of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence's internal security department, specifically for advertising purposes.

Microsoft released a report last year which said that since the Gaza war, Iran "surged its cyber, influence, and cyber-enabled influence operations against Israel".

"From October 7, 2023, to July 2024, nearly half of the Iranian operations Microsoft observed targeted Israeli companies," said the Microsoft Digital Defense Report.

The US software giant's report in October said that from July to October 2023, only 10 percent of Iranian cyberattacks targeted Israel, while 35 percent aimed at American entities and 20 percent at the United Arab Emirates.

However, the war has seen a spike in cyber attacks on Israel alongside attacks by Iran's military allies against the Jewish state.

"Within two days of Hamas' attack on Israel, Iran stood up several new influence operations," Microsoft said.

Mohsen al-Mandalawi made the comment in a recent interview with Reuters, reflecting on significant shifts in the Middle East, including the weakening of Iran-aligned armed groups in Gaza and Lebanon and the overthrow of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad by rebel forces.

"Today, we have stability. Foreign companies are coming to Iraq," said Mandalawi, himself a businessman with interests in Iraqi hotels, hospitals and cash transfer services.

"Iraq has started to take on its natural role among Arab states. Iran is a neighbor with whom we have historical ties. Our geographical position and our relations with Arab states are separate matters," he said, speaking at his office in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, home to government institutions and foreign embassies.

"I don't think that the weakening of Iran will negatively impact Iraq."

Mandalawi’s support for limiting the power of Iran-backed armed groups comes despite his affiliation with Iraq's Shiite Coordination Framework, a bloc of politicians with close ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iraq attempts to balance its relations with Tehran and Washington has been complicated by attacks on US troops and Israel by these groups following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein recently said that Baghdad is actively working to persuade these factions to disarm.

Mandalawi acknowledged that this process will take time but believes it is achievable given Iraq's growing focus on political and economic development.

"Limiting arms to the state is important and I hope that it will be implemented," he said.

"Since the massacre on Oct 7th, Israel has been fighting a war against the multidimensional Iranian threat on seven fronts. We have made many achievements and dramatically weakened those who seek our destruction," he said.

Since the Gaza war began, sparked by Iran-backed Hamas's attacks on Israel, the most deadly single day for Jews since the Holocaust, Israel has faced attacks from Iran's allies across the Middle East, including Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and the occupied West Bank. Israel has since pounded Hamas in Gaza and massively debilitated Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran's most powerful ally.

"Iran and its partners continue to threaten the regional and global stability. The upcoming months present us with the challenges that require military readiness," Katz added.

It comes as President Donald Trump just announced that military support for Israel, which had been put on hold by the Biden administration, is now en-route to Israel.

“A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are on their way!” Trump wrote on his social media app Truth Social on Saturday.

The Biden administration had withheld weapons including 2,000 pound bombs as it tried to force Israel towards a ceasefire and the release of more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Trump said to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, “we released them (the bombs). We released them today. And they’ll have them. They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time. They’ve been in storage.”

Last week, when asked by a reporter in the Oval Office whether he would support Israel striking Iran's nuclear facilities, President Trump said: "Obviously, I'm not going to answer that question."

"It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step ... Iran hopefully will make a deal, and if they don't make a deal, I guess that's okay too."

Without elaborating, Trump said he would be meeting various "very high-level people" in the coming days to discuss the Iran dossier.