INTERNACIONAL
Israel’s ‘resounding’ military campaign against Iran could be historic turning point, experts say
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Israel’s military campaign in Iran has already produced «enormous achievements,» according to experts tracking the conflict, with many citing the operation as the payoff for years of preparation, battlefield innovation and intelligence development.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a leading voice on U.S. policy toward Iran, called Israel’s progress «a resounding military win.»
«They’ve actually dominated the Iranian military,» Dubowitz told Fox News Digital. «They’ve taken out many senior military leaders, the Iranian Air Force, and a significant percentage of missile launchers and ballistic inventory.»
Still, Iran’s retaliation is taking a toll. On Thursday morning, an Iranian missile struck Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba and targeted several major cities, injuring hundreds. Despite the heavy costs, military experts insist that the IDF continues to hold the upper hand, both tactically and strategically.
IRAN WARNS US JOINING CONFLICT WOULD MEAN ‘ALL‑OUT WAR’
Since the beginning of Israel’s war with Iran there have been over 600 Aerial Refuelings in the Middle Eastern Skies. (IDF)
Comparing the scale of success to the Six-Day War, Dubowitz said, «It’s starting to look like 1967, when the Israelis eviscerated five Arab armies. It may take longer than six days, but they’re certainly on that trajectory.»
Hila Hadad-Hamelnik, a strategist at «Mind Israel» think tank and former CEO of the Ministry of Innovation, noted that the success is no accident — it is the result of «years of preparation in every aspect.» From developing long-range strike capabilities to building an unparalleled intelligence apparatus and adapting operational doctrines from Gaza and Lebanon, she said the IDF’s current dominance is a product of both innovation and experience.
«This is not a campaign someone decided to do six months ago,» she said. «This is years of work — in intelligence, in weapons development, in defensive and offensive operations. The methods we tested against Hezbollah — striking command chains quickly and precisely — were studied, refined, and applied here.»
A massive plume of smoke and fire rises from an oil refinery in southern Tehran following reports that an overnight Israeli strike targeted the site on June 15, 2025. (Atta Kenare/AFP)
She pointed to lessons learned in Gaza, especially the importance of rapidly identifying and eliminating rocket launchers before strikes even begin. «We learned through hard fighting that you have to neutralize launchers, not just intercept the missiles. And that doctrine — developed in Gaza where targets are five minutes away — has now been adapted to Iran, with all the complexity that entails.»
ISRAEL SAYS IT HAS AERIAL SUPERIORITY OVER TEHRAN, IRANIAN INTELLIGENCE LEADER KILLED»
Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot on June 15, 2025, in Tehran, Iran. Iran’s foreign minister said the country would respond «decisively and proportionally» to a wave of attacks that Israel launched beginning in the early hours of June 13. The attacks targeted multiple military, scientific and residential locations, as well as senior government officials. (Stringer/Getty Images)
Hadad-Hamelnik stressed that Israel’s control over Iranian skies is «stunning … the Air Force is flying over Iran day after day. Drones are holding the skies.»
Smokes raises from a building of the Soroka hospital complex after it was hit by a missile fired from Iran in Be’er Sheva, Israel, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Even with the heavy toll taken when Iran’s missiles get through, like the attack against Soroka hospital on Thursday, she credited the country’s defensive systems, like Iron Dome and David’s Sling — systems she helped develop — which intercepted missile salvos with over 90% effectiveness, even amid unprecedented barrages. «This is a war of a different scale, and yet the systems are holding,» she said.
Dubowitz acknowledged that despite massive gains, one key target remains: the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, buried under a mountain at a Revolutionary Guard base.
A map shows where Iran’s most important nuclear facilities are situated. (Fox News)
«Israel has devastated Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. They’ve eliminated 14 senior nuclear scientists — the ‘Oppenheimers’ of Iran’s program,» he said. «But Fordow remains. And if it’s left standing, Iran can rebuild.»
While Dubowitz clarified that he is not explicitly calling for U.S. military strikes, he said that «President Trump must ensure Fordow is fully dismantled — whether through a diplomatic agreement or, if Iran refuses, a targeted military intervention.»
He outlined three potential paths: «One, Iran shows up for a real deal and the program is dismantled. Two, Trump strikes Fordow. Three, Trump strikes and then negotiates. But either way, it has to end with Iran losing its nuclear weapons capability — not just temporarily, but permanently.»
An Israeli fighter jet takes off for strikes in Tehran. (IDF)
INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET WAR IN IRAN: MOSSAD COMMANDOS, HIDDEN DRONES AND THE STRIKE THAT STUNNED TEHRAN
Hadad-Hamelnik believes Israel’s success has created an opportunity for the United States.
«Thanks to the phenomenal achievements of the IDF, the situation is now very clear. If the U.S. were to join at this point, with Fordow as the main remaining target and most assets already degraded, it would not look like getting pulled into a quagmire,» she said. «This is nothing like Ukraine or Afghanistan. There’s an actual path to decisive success, and that can change the political calculus in Washington.»
Dubowitz added that Israel’s offensive struck not only military and nuclear targets, but also Iran’s internal security infrastructure — including state media and the regime’s repressive arms. for that, he said, could open the door for future domestic unrest. «We can’t expect people to protest while missiles are falling. But if Israel continues striking the regime’s tools of repression, space may open for Iranians to return to the streets.»
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Dubowitz, who has spent two decades warning of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, reflected on the moment with cautious hope. «I’m heartened to see the long arm of Israeli justice reach those responsible for such brutal aggression,» he said.
«This may be a historic opportunity to truly end Iran’s nuclear threat, and perhaps even to support the Iranian people in reclaiming their future,» he added, «There have been incredible achievements, but if Fordow is left standing by President Donald Trump, then it could end up being a Pyrrhic victory.»
INTERNACIONAL
Federal judge limits Trump’s ability to deport Abrego Garcia after lengthy court battle
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Greenbelt, Md. – A federal judge in Maryland issued an emergency ruling Wednesday blocking the Trump administration from immediately taking Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia into ICE custody for 72 hours after he is released from criminal custody in Nashville, Tennessee — attempting to slow, if only temporarily, a case at the center of a legal and political maelstrom.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said in her order that the government must refrain from immediately taking Abrego into ICE custody pending release from criminal custody in Tennessee, and ordered he be returned to the ICE Order of Supervision at the Baltimore Field Office— the closest ICE facility near the district of Maryland where Abrego was arrested earlier this year.
Xinis said at an evidentiary hearing this month that she would take action soon, in anticipation of a looming detention hearing for Abrego Garcia in his criminal case. She said she planned to issue the order with sufficient time to block the Trump administration’s stated plans to immediately begin the process of deporting Abrego Garcia again upon release — this time to a third country such as Mexico or South Sudan.
Xinis’s order said the additional time will ensure Abrego can raise any credible fears of removal to a third country, and via «the appropriate channels in the immigration process.» She also ordered the government to provide Abrego and his attorneys with «immediate written notice» of plans to transport him to a third country, again with the 72-hour notice period, «so that Abrego Garcia may assert claims of credible fear or seek any other relief available to him under the law and the Constitution.»
TRUMP HAS CUSTODY OVER JAILED CECOT MIGRANTS, EL SALVADOR SAYS, COMPLICATING COURT FIGHTS
Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, to protest the Trump administration’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March in what administration officials said was an administrative error, on July 7, 2025. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
Xinis said in her order Wednesday that the 72-hour notice period is necessary «to prevent a repeat of Abrego Garcia’s unlawful deportation to El Salvador by way of third-country removal.»
«Defendants have taken no concrete steps to ensure that any prospective third country would not summarily return Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in an end-run around the very withholding order that offers him uncontroverted protection,» she said.
The order from Xinis, who presided over Abrego Garcia’s civil case, was ultimately handed down on Wednesday just two minutes after a federal judge in Nashville — U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw — issued a separate order, upholding a lower judge’s decision that Abrego should be released from criminal custody pending trial in January.
Crenshaw said in his order that the government failed to provide «any evidence that there is something in Abrego’s history at warrants detention.»
The plans, which Xinis ascertained over the course of a multi-day evidentiary hearing earlier this month, capped an exhausting, 19-week legal saga in the case of Abrego Garcia that spanned two continents, multiple federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and inspired countless hours of news coverage.
Still, it ultimately yielded little in the way of new answers, and Xinis likened the process to «nailing Jell-O to a wall,» and «beating a frustrated and dead horse,» among other things.
«We operate as government of laws,» she scolded lawyers for the Trump administration in one of many terse exchanges. «We don’t operate as a government of ’take my word for it.’»
FEDERAL JUDGE EXTENDS ARGUMENTS IN ABREGO GARCIA CASE, SLAMS ICE WITNESS WHO ‘KNEW NOTHING’
A person holds up a sign referencing the the CECOT prison in El Salvador during demonstration against President Donald Trump and his immigration policies in Houston, Texas, on May 1, 2025. (Photo: AFP va Getty Images) (AFP via Getty)
Xinis had repeatedly floated the notion of a temporary restraining order, or TRO, to ensure certain safeguards were in place to keep Abrego Garcia in ICE custody, and appeared to agree with his attorneys that such an order is likely needed to prevent their client from being removed again, without access to counsel or without a chance to appeal his country of removal.
«I’m just trying to understand what you’re trying to do,» Xinis said on more than one occasion, growing visibly frustrated.
«I’m deeply concerned that if there’s no restraint on you, Abrego will be on another plane to another country,» she told the Justice Department, noting pointedly that «that’s what you’ve done in other cases.»
Those concerns were echoed repeatedly by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys in a court filing earlier this month.
They noted the number of times that the Trump administration has appeared to have undercut or misrepresented its position before the court in months past, as Xinis attempted to ascertain the status of Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, and what efforts, if any, the Trump administration was making to comply with a court order to facilitate his return.
The Trump administration, who reiterated their belief that the case is no longer in her jurisdiction, will almost certainly move to immediately appeal the restraining order to a higher court.
TRUMP HAS CUSTODY OVER JAILED CECOT MIGRANTS, EL SALVADOR SAYS, COMPLICATING COURT FIGHTS
Demonstrators gather cheering and chanting slogans, during the nationwide «Hands Off!» protest against Trump in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty)
The order comes two weeks after an extraordinary, multi-day evidentiary hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Xinis sparred with Trump administration officials as she attempted to make sense of their remarks and ascertain their next steps as they look to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country.
She said she planned to issue the order before the date that Abrego could possibly be released from federal custody— a request made by lawyers for Abrego Garcia, who asked the court for more time in criminal custody, citing the many countries he might suffer persecution in — and concerns about what legal status he would have in the third country of removal.
Without legal status in Mexico, Xinis said, it would likely be a «quick road» to being deported by the country’s government to El Salvador, in violation of the withholding of removal order.
And in South Sudan, another country DHS is apparently considering, lawyers for Abrego noted the State Department currently has a Level 4 advisory in place discouraging U.S. travel due to violence and armed conflict.
Americans who do travel there should «draft a will» beforehand and designate insurance beneficiaries, according to official guidance on the site.
FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TELL JUDGE THEY WILL DEPORT KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA TO A THIRD COUNTRY AFTER DETENTION
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys speak to reporters outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, in July. (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital) (Breanne Deppisch/Fox News Digital)
In court, both in July and in earlier hearings, Xinis struggled to keep her own frustration and her incredulity at bay after months of back-and-forth with Justice Department attorneys.
Xinis has presided over Abrego Garcia’s civil case since March, when he was deported to El Salvador in violation of an existing court order in what Trump administration officials described as an «administrative error.»
She spent hours pressing Justice Department officials, over the course of three separate hearings, for details on the government’s plans for removing Abrego Garcia to a third country — a process she likened to «trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.»
Xinis chastised the Justice Department this month for presenting a DHS witness to testify under oath about ICE’s plans to deport Abrego Garcia, fuming that the official, Thomas Giles, «knew nothing» about his case, and made no effort to ascertain answers — despite his rank as ICE’s third-highest enforcement official.
The four hours of testimony he provided was «fairly stunning,» and «insulting to her intelligence,» Xinis said.
Ultimately, the court would not allow the «unfettered release» of Abrego Garcia pending release from federal custody in Tennessee without «full-throated assurances» from the Trump administration that it will keep Abrego Garcia in ICE custody for a set period of time and locally, Xinis said, to ensure immigration officials do not «spirit him away to Nome, Alaska.»
During the July hearing, Judge Xinis notably declined to weigh in on the request for sanctions filed by lawyers for Abrego Garcia, but alluded to it in her ruling Wednesday.
«Defendants’ defiance and foot- dragging are, to be sure, the subject of a separate sanctions motion,» she said in the ruling— indicating further steps could be taken as she attempts to square months of differing statements from Trump officials.
«The Court will not recount this troubling history in detail, other than to note Defendants’ persistent lack of transparency with the tribunal adds to why further injunctive relief is warranted,» she said.
TRUMP’S REMARKS COULD COME BACK TO BITE HIM IN ABREGO GARCIA DEPORTATION BATTLE
This still from video from July 22, 2015 show Paula Xinis from US Senate Judiciary Committee (US Senate Judiciary Committee)
The Justice Department, after a short recess, declined to agree, prompting Xinis to proceed with her plans for the TRO.
Xinis told the court that ultimately, «much delta» remains between where they ended things in court, and what she is comfortable with, given the government’s actions in the past.
This was apparent on multiple occasions Friday, when Xinis told lawyers for the Trump administration that she «isn’t buying» their arguments or doesn’t «have faith» in the statements they made — reflecting an erosion of trust that could prove damaging in the longer-term.
The hearings this week capped months of back-and-forth between Xinis and the Trump administration, as she tried, over the course of 19 weeks, to track the status of a single migrant deported erroneously by the Trump administration to El Salvador—and to trace what attempts, if any, they had made facilitate his return to the U.S.
CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Xinis previously took aim at what she deemed to be the lack of information submitted to the court as part of an expedited discovery process she ordered this year, describing the government’s submissions as «vague, evasive and incomplete»— and which she said demonstrated «willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.»
On Friday, she echoed this view. «You have taken the presumption of regularity and you’ve destroyed it, in my view,» Xinis said.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A plane carrying nearly 50 people on board reportedly crashed in Russia’s Far East on Thursday and local emergency services have located the wreckage.
The country’s Emergency Situations Ministry said search crews found the plane’s burning fuselage on a hillside south of its planned destination in the town of Tynda, which is located near the Russia’s border with China.
Images of the reported crash site circulated by Russian state media show debris scattered among dense forest, surrounded by plumes of smoke.
LONDON-BOUND PLANE CARRYING MORE THAN 200 PEOPLE CRASHES AFTER TAKEOFF IN INDIA
An An-24 aircraft of Angara Airlines lands at the airport of Irkutsk, Russia April 13, 2014. (REUTERS/Marina Lystseva/File Photo)
An initial aerial inspection of the site suggested that there were no survivors, Russia’s Interfax news agency said, citing unnamed sources in the emergency services. Its sources also said that there were difficult weather conditions in the area.
The transport prosecutor’s office said the plane attempted a second approach while trying to land when contact with it was lost.
Forty-three passengers, including five children, as well as six crew members were on board the An-24 passenger plane as it traveled from the city of Blagoveshchensk on the Russian-Chinese border to the town of Tynda, regional Gov. Vasily Orlov said.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry reported that 48 people were on board the flight, which was operated by Siberia-based Angara Airlines. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
INTERNACIONAL
Irán: el miedo a otra guerra con Israel y el regreso de las sanciones de la ONU inquietan a los habitantes de Teherán
La amenaza del snapback
Casas dañadas tras un reciente ataque aéreo israelí en la capital, Teherán, Irán, el 26 de junio de 2025. Foto EFELas cartas de Teherán
Federal judge limits Trump’s ability to deport Abrego Garcia after lengthy court battle
Russian plane carrying dozens of passengers crashes in country’s Far East
Irán: el miedo a otra guerra con Israel y el regreso de las sanciones de la ONU inquietan a los habitantes de Teherán
El Gobierno ofreció a los estatales un aumento de 7,5% por seis meses
El Gobierno creó un sistema federal para identificar autos con pedidos de secuestro
Así fueron las primeras horas de Wanda Nara y L-Gante juntos en Mallorca: “Playita»
Juan Carlos Maqueda defendió la condena contra Cristina Kirchner: “Hay una sensación de que se hizo Justicia y que no hay impunidad”
El Gobierno anunció el inicio del proceso de privatización de AySA
Alarma por el dólar: la volatilidad se mantiene, pese a las medidas urgentes de Caputo
Expulsada del Gobierno, Victoria Villarruel empieza a tomar distancia, pero no tiene proyecto político para este año
La CGT evalúa adelantar a octubre el recambio de sus autoridades y define una movilización contra Milei
🗳️ El chamuyo de las elecciones en la Provincia: se postulan, pero no a asumen
El análisis de Jorge Fernández Díaz sobre la política económica: “Veo una tragedia detrás del dólar barato”
Después de ser premiado con la distinción Mariano de Cavia en Madrid, el periodista Jorge Fernández Díaz analizó la situación...
Patricia Bullrich ratificó el derecho de admisión para Toviggino en los partidos con doble hinchada: “No debe ingresar”
Luego del intercambio de acusaciones entre Pablo Toviggino y funcionarios del gobierno nacional, la ministra de Seguridad, Patricia Bullrich, ratificó...
Día del Cerebro: por qué se celebra hoy y recomendaciones para mantener una mente ágil
El Día del Cerebro se conmemora el 22 de julio de cada año, con el objetivo de concientizar acerca de...
POLITICA2 días ago🗳️ El chamuyo de las elecciones en la Provincia: se postulan, pero no a asumen
- POLITICA2 días ago
Fuerte malestar en la CGT por la ausencia de gremialistas en las listas bonaerenses del peronismo
- CHIMENTOS2 días ago
El desgarrador testimonio del hermano de Locomotora Oliveras: “El daño es irreversible, solo puede vivir con respirador”
