The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Thursday on an oil smuggling network generating hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran.

Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff used front companies to ship oil and used the revenue to fund terrorist groups, including Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, according to the department.

“The Iranian regime remains focused on leveraging its oil revenues to fund the development of its nuclear program, to produce its deadly ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles and to support its regional terrorist proxy groups,” stated Scott Bessent, the U.S. treasury secretary. “The United States is committed to aggressively targeting any attempt by Iran to secure funding for these malign activities.”

Thursday’s action is the first round of new sanctions on the Islamic Republic since U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday re-imposing a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran.

The sanctions target part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers and shell companies that help Iran smuggle oil and ultimately sell it to China.

The Treasury Department listed 18 people, entities and ships to be newly designated for sanctions in countries including China, India and the United Arab Emirates.

The United States has previously designated dozens of ships, companies and people for taking part in the elaborate and lucrative smuggling scheme.

Tammy Bruce, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, stated that "the United States will not tolerate Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior and is today sanctioning an international network that channels illicit revenue to the Iranian military.

"We will use all tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable for its destabilizing activities and pursuit of nuclear weapons that threaten the civilized world," she added.

Jewish lawmakers formed a caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time on Thursday as a venue to “exchange ideas and advocate for the issues important to the American Jewish community.”

Of the 24 Jewish members of the House, 18 gathered to elect Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) as co-chairs with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as founder.

“In response to unprecedented rising antisemitism in the United States and the challenges the American Jewish community has faced in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, the need for this caucus is understandable,” Nadler stated. “I am confident this caucus will bring Jewish members together to strive to achieve unity, not unanimity, and will be a productive forum to discuss issues of import to the American Jewish community.”

An informal caucus of Jewish House members met for the first time after the Hamas-led assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and previously working group meetings of Jewish elected representatives have taken place. But Thursday’s gathering is the first time that such a group has been organized formally as a congressional member organization. The House has dozens of such organizations to support racial or ethnic groups, including the Congressional Black Caucus, or to advance issue sets, like the Congressional Nuclear Cleanup Caucus or the Congressional Cranberry Caucus.

All 18 Jewish House members who met on Feb. 6 were Democrats, though three Jewish Republicans sit in the 119th Congress. The caucus is “open to all members who self-identify as Jewish and agree with the mission statement,” a spokesman for Nadler told JNS.

JNS sought comment from the three Republicans about whether they intended to join the group. The office of Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) told JNS he would not be joining the caucus. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) has previously said he does not join caucuses.

Nadler said he believes that the group will foster discussions and an exchange of perspectives about Jewish issues.

“After all,” he said, “as the old adage goes: two Jews, three opinions.”

U.S. Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, traveled to Israel from Feb. 5-7 to meet with top Israeli military and security officials, CENTCOM stated on Friday.

There, he reiterated “the ironclad military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and Israel,” according to the U.S. military.

Kurilla met with Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the outgoing Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces; Ronan Bar, director of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet); Mossad director David Barnea; and Israeli Air Force Cmdr. Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar; and other key IDF staff, per CENTCOM.

The leaders discussed Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and other regional threats, including Iran and Syria, according to the U.S. readout.

Kurilla and Halevi discussed “deepening the enduring military partnership” between America and Israel, and “interoperability and capabilities” between the armed forces of the nations, per the readout.

Kurilla also visited the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile-defense system battery the United States provided to Israel in 2024.

The IDF said he also spoke with “senior IDF officers, focusing on addressing threats in the Middle East through military cooperation.”

“Additionally, they discussed various possible scenarios on both near and distant fronts,” the Israeli military stated. “The IDF considers its relationship and cooperation with the U.S. military to be of great importance and significance and will continue to strengthen it.”

Brad Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, posted on X: “Good to see this visit to Israel by Gen. Kurilla.” 

He added: “Much to discuss. Let’s hope planning is underway for a Juniper Oak 2025 that is bigger and better than the 2023 iteration. The new iteration should rehearse as realistically as possible a combined U.S.-Israel strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Should include B-2s.”

That, he wrote, “will make Tehran think twice about sprinting to a bomb and ensure we are ready for the worst if the regime makes a bad decision.”

AIPAC said in response to the meeting that “America’s partnership with Israel helps keep both countries stronger and safer.”

Standing aside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged “ironclad” support for the Jewish state on Friday.

“As Prime Minister Netanyahu said Tuesday at the White House, when our enemies see daylight between Israel and the United States, they will exploit it,” Johnson said following a closed-door meeting with the prime minister. “We all know that is true, and that’s why strong, decisive leadership is so crucial in this time.”

Originally scheduled for Thursday, the meeting was postponed due to budget talks at the White House with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Following Johnson’s remarks, Netanyahu also talked about the close relationship between the United States and Israel, which he said was only reinforced during his visit this week, including his meeting at the White House with Trump.

“I was deeply moved by the reception that we got, the substantive things that we discussed—making sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and also making sure Hamas is destroyed,” Netanyahu said. “We’re not going to have a future for Gaza or a future for peace in our part of the world if Hamas remains there.” 

“It sets the tone for this great strengthening of the American-Israeli alliance,” he added. “It’s not only an alliance between governments. It’s an alliance between peoples.”

Netanyahu also thanked Trump for releasing the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that then-President Joe Biden held up last year over, he said, worries about civilian casualties, even as he approved a new $8 billion sale of weapons to Israel last month.

The Israeli prime minister said that he has developed a “very warm personal bond” with Johnson and invited the House speaker to come to Israel. “This year in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said. 

Johnson said that the first measure under his leadership that passed the House was a resolution that reaffirmed the American commitment to Israel’s security. 

Congress also approved a new aid package for Israel last April, but not before Johnson initially insisted that the bill also cut billions of dollars in funding for the Internal Revenue Service to increase audits of wealthy taxpayers. That provision never made it into the final $95 billion legislation that also included funding for Ukraine and Taiwan.

Haaretz is often described, both in Israel and abroad, as Israel’s finest newspaper. While readers recognize its far-left political bias, many see it as a reliable source to learn about the reality in Israel. They believe that the paper’s reporters, commentators and columnists are professionals who don't fabricate information and that their editors would correct any factual errors.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

On Jan. 19, the Arab-Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh, leader of the Hadash Party, tweeted he was “Happy for the release of the hostages and prisoners.” That sparked an uproar in Israel, and Odeh was condemned from all sides of the political spectrum.

Then Haaretz columnist Carolina Landsmann came to Odeh’s defense. In her Jan. 23 op-ed, she claimed it was just “a trivial tweet by an Arab Israeli who identifies with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” That is an interesting description for someone who has put the terrorists being released in the hostage deal on par with kidnapped civilians being held by Hamas.

But the most misleading part of the piece is Landsmann’s depiction of Odeh as “the epitome of Arab-Israeli moderation.”

The epitome of moderation? Anyone who has followed Odeh’s track record knows that he’s a dangerous extremist. Here are a few examples. Odeh headed the “Arab coalition against national service” and ran campaigns among Arab youth against serving in the “racist state that calls itself the ‘Jewish state.’ ”

Odeh praised Hezbollah’s terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “model of loyalty and sacrifice,” who presented “a unique resistance model.”

He also slammed the Gulf states for defining Hezbollah as a terror group and refused to condemn them. He boycotted the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres; visited the incarcerated terrorists Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat; and called for the release of all prisoners held in Israel, which would include terrorists who slaughtered babies in their cradles during the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

This is the epitome of moderation, according to Haaretz.

The newspaper’s obliviousness to empirical reality is also prevalent in the field of law and justice. After Justice Itzhak Amit was appointed as the new head of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chen Ma’anit, Haaretz’s legal correspondent, decided to use the opportunity to condemn Justice Minister Yariv Levin. As Ma’anit wrote on Jan. 27, “Levin apparently managed to achieve one thing in his two-year battle against the Supreme Court: to damage the court’s standing in the eyes of the public.”

Ma’anit may blame Levin for the Israeli public’s distrust in its Supreme Court, but the facts tell a different story.

First, the dramatic loss of trust began in 2012—a decade before Levin took office—and has continued consistently ever since. Secondly, a 2022 academic study that examined data over several decades and was published in the faculty of law journal at the Hebrew University showed that the public’s loss of trust in the Supreme Court—at the rate of over 30%, the worst decline in the world—began with the legal revolution that then-Justice Aharon Barak forced on the public in the early 1990s.

Then there is the field of security and counterterrorism.

An example is a Jan. 28 story by Haaretz’s military correspondent, Yaniv Kubovich, about the current Israeli military operation against terrorist infrastructure in Jenin.

One of the operation’s goals is to hit the “Jenin Battalion,” also known as the “Jenin Brigades,” a terror militia. But according to Haaretz, “no such unit exists.” Kubovich claims that to justify its operation and divert criticism away from the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces “rebranded Jenin’s ‘armed thugs’ as Hamas battalion.” In other words, it’s all just smoke and mirrors.

This claim has no basis. The Jenin Brigades militia operates in the city and has been known by that name for several years. It even has Wikipedia entries in Hebrew, English and Arabic. There, it says that the militia was founded in 2021 by Islamic Jihad figure Jamil al-Amori, and serves as an “umbrella formation affiliated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], Hamas and [Fatah’s] Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.”

Information on the terror militia appeared online long before the Jenin operation and Haaretz claiming that it is a case of Israeli “rebranding.” In October 2022, the pro-Hamas website Middle East Eye published an article praising the militia, calling it “Palestine’s new resistance.” In July 2022, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center posted an investigation into the Jenin Battalion, calling it “a network of armed terrorist operatives in the Jenin refugee camp.”

Additionally, just a few months ago the Palestinian Authority launched an operation against the militia. It was covered by Qatari outlets such as The New Arab and Al Jazeera, which said that “the Jenin Brigades, aka the Jenin Battalion, is an umbrella group that includes Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades and Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.”

To take Haaretz’s reporting seriously, you’d have to wonder why blatantly anti-Israeli outlets would cooperate with IDF “rebranding” attempts months before they were even needed.

The answer, of course, is that no rebranding ever took place. The existence of the Jenin Battalion is a well-known reality, and Haaretz’s reporting should be taken with large grains of salt.

Israel received the list of hostages Hamas has said it will release on Saturday and has notified the families of the captives, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated on Friday.

“We request to refrain from disseminating rumors and unofficial information,” the prime minister’s office said.

His office said that Netanyahu, who has been in Washington, D.C., since Sunday, will be monitoring the situation from “the control center of the delegation in the United States and will receive continuous updates.”

The prime minister, who has met with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle over the past two days, was slated on Friday to meet with House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), with Jeremy Pelter, acting U.S. secretary of commerce, and with Jewish students.

As part of his busy Thursday at the U.S. Capitol, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a one-time volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces.

Mast told JNS that there was no need for him and Netanyahu to waste any time getting to know each other. “We toured hospitals together a year ago and met each other at other occasions,” Mast said of a December 2023 trip to Israel, during which he and the Israeli prime minister visited wounded Israeli soldiers.

Thursday’s meeting “was specifically to speak about very important issues—from what’s going on in the battle, as we speak, what’s going on with the hostages that are still being held, what needs to happen in the future, what’s going on with the proposal from President Trump to essentially rebuild Gaza into a different world than the Middle East has ever seen following peace,” Mast explained.

Earlier in the week, the congressman’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, ranking member Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), placed a pause on a $1 billion arms sale package to Israel, according to Mast. (Each of the “big four”—the chairman and ranking member of the Senate and House foreign relations panels—has the power to block high-dollar arms sales.)

JNS asked if any progress had been made on the paused sale during Netanyahu’s visit. Mast told JNS that he isn’t sure where Meeks stands “in terms of where to go forward.”

Mast and the committee can have a positive impact on Israel and the region in many other ways, he told JNS.

He cited the House-passed bill to sanction the International Criminal Court, a stand-alone court in The Hague that isn’t part of the United Nations, for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister. A companion bill is stuck in the Senate, having only garnered one Democratic vote from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

“That’s something that needs to be revisited,” Mast said.

Israel must have the tools it needs, so that neither Jerusalem nor the rest of the world “has to face a nuclear-armed Iran, or that they have the tools that they need to make sure that Hamas is completely destroyed,” Mast said.

The region can’t move on from the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, until there is a neighbor in Gaza “that’s willing to accept an independent and Jewish state without the idea that they’re somehow going to return and have no Jewish state, and that’s willing to put up their white flag of surrender following this genocide that they’ve conducted against Israel,” the congressman said.

‘Look at this situation in a holistic way’

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration announced its first round of sanctions against Iran, even as U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier in the week that he felt forced by some in his administration to sign an executive order announcing a return to the “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic.

Trump has said he prefers to try to make a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program before planning any type of preemptive military action.

Mast suggested that House Republicans, despite their generally hawkish nature on Iran, follow Trump’s lead.

“‘Maximum pressure’ is the term we used in the first administration for what took place with Iran,” he said. “There is a coalition to make sure that there will not be a strong Iran—a nuclear-armed Iran—starting with the sanctions that we put on them, making sure that they’re not transferring oil and other things to our adversaries, like China, and drones to Russia.”

JNS asked Mast if there is consensus among House Republicans on Trump’s announced strategy to clear Gaza of its population to make way for a revitalization of the decimated Strip, and for the United States to take it over.

“President Trump has given more details about how he can see this, but what he’s offering is common sense,” Mast said. “For anybody that’s been in an area like this, he’s looking at the situation.”

Mast said that includes the fact that Palestinians “were intertwined throughout their communities with terrorists—whether they were in their schools, whether they were in their hospitals, whether they were in the same buildings, just absolutely intertwined with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Lions Den, Fatah, you name it.”

Those terror groups include some based in Judea and Samaria, with Fatah serving as the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority.

“They have moved out of those areas because of the destruction of those terrorist groups that had to take place. So they are already relocated,” Mast said. “Where they return to, there’s not a bathroom, there’s not a stove, there’s not a grocery store, so they’re going to be somewhere else. Ultimately, you have to look at this situation in a holistic way.”

Syria was torn apart by years of civil war with millions of citizens fleeing the country and many Ukrainians moved to the western part of the country amid Russia’s invasion.

Mast told JNS that neither Egypt nor Jordan is allowing Palestinians in. “So you have to ask that question,” he said. “You have to find that willing partner that’s going to say they can go in there while the appropriate things take place to change the Middle East.”

Alicia Verdugo, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, announced on Tuesday that she is resigning as cultural affairs commissioner of the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council two days before she was slated to appear before the student government’s judicial board amid allegations of Jew-hatred, the Daily Bruin, a student paper, reported.

Screenshots attributed to Verdugo appeared to show her directing staff not to hire “Zionist” applicants. Bella Brannon, a senior at UCLA, filed a complaint, stating that Verdugo’s actions violated university policies, as well as state and federal anti-discrimination laws by intentionally discriminating against Jewish students, per the paper. (The Daily Bruin referred to Verdugo with both the pronouns “she” and “they.”)

Students at the public university who self-identified as Jewish without mentioning Israel had their applications rejected by Verdugo’s office, the New York Post reported. (JNS sought comment from UCLA.)

In a post on a Cultural Affairs Commission at UCLA social-media account on Wednesday, Verdugo wrote, “I am so proud of how we have led the commission this past year.” She added that the student group’s “extensive cultural and political history on this campus has shown how we will always prioritize the safety and empowerment of our black, indigenous, students of color on our campus.”

Hillel at UCLA welcomed Verdugo’s resignation.

“It is no surprise that this comes ahead of this week’s judicial board hearing that intended to hold them responsible for a pattern of antisemitism, including the most recent incident of clear discrimination against Jewish students when hiring for roles within” the student government, the student board of the UCLA Hillel told JNS.

“We commend and stand with Bella Brannon, who courageously took a stand publicly against the Cultural Affairs Commission to call for this judicial hearing, as well as with all other Jewish students who have faced similar antisemitism hate and antisemitic discrimination on our campus,” the student board said.

“Antisemitism has no place at UCLA, and we hope that the Cultural Affairs Commission’s resignation stands as an example that we will not stand idly by to those who continue to think they can get away with promoting antisemitic rhetoric and discriminatory actions,” the student board added. It also called on the UCLA administration to “do their part in supporting Jewish Bruins.”

The UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council still lists Verdugo as an officer on its site. 

“In May 2024, Verdugo was arrested while protesting at UCLA’s unlawful anti-Israel protest encampment,” according to Canary Mission.

“In a video published on May 1, 2024, Verdugo called for Israel’s destruction during an interview as UCLA’s ‘encampment media liaison,’” the watchdog added. “When a reporter accused Verdugo of promoting the ‘destruction of Israel,’ Verdugo replied, ‘Yes! Because the destruction of Israel will put an end to the siege on Gaza and an end to the occupation!’”

In the final days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education announced in January that it was closing an investigation after finding that UCLA did not violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in its response to Jew-hatred in 2018 during a Students for Justice in Palestine event on campus.

Kanye West, the rapper who goes by Ye and has a long history of Jew-hatred, posted another series of antisemitic, expletive-ridden messages on social media to 32.4 million followers on Friday morning.

Among West's posts were that "any Jewish person that does business with me needs to know I don't like or trust any Jewish person and this is completely sober with no Hennessy" and a post stating that "I’m going to normalize talking about Hitler."

In another post, Ye wrote "I'm never apologize for my Jewish comments," adding in another, "Call me Yaydolf Yitler."

"Kanye West descends deeper and deeper into the abyss of antisemitism," wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). "Yet he continues to be invited to the Grammys as if he had done nothing wrong. West should be ostracized for his rabid antisemitism."

The rapper continues purposefully to "use his platform to spew anti-Jewish hatred. While some may dismiss his hateful rants, we cannot overlook the dangerous influence they can have on his millions of followers, particularly on social media, where a significant portion of today’s antisemitism thrives," stated the American Jewish Committee.

"Hate, left unchecked, only multiplies. At a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing to terrifying levels worldwide, Ye is actively endangering Jews," the AJC added. "We urge others with a platform like Ye’s—particularly in the entertainment industry—to call out this blatant hatred."

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said West's rant was "another egregious display of antisemitism, racism and misogyny."

"Just a few years ago, ADL found that 30 antisemitic indents nationwide were tied to Kanye’s 2022 antisemitic rants," Greenblatt stated. "We condemn this dangerous behavior and need to call it what it is: a flagrant and unequivocal display of hate."

"We know this game all too well. Let's call Ye's hate-filled public rant for what it really is: a sad attempt for attention that uses Jews as a scapegoat," he added. "But unfortunately, it does get attention because Kanye has a far-reaching platform on which to spread his antisemitism and hate. Words matter, and as we’ve seen too many times before, hateful rhetoric can prompt real-world consequences."