Marco Rubio

April 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Israeli and Lebanese diplomats agreed to extend their cease-fire by three weeks in talks held at the White House.

The announcement came after the president hosted the countries’ ambassadors for negotiations along with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michael Issa.

“The Meeting went very well!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah. The Ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by THREE WEEKS.

“I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting!”

During an Oval Office press conference on Thursday evening, Trump announced that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would both be visit Washington in the next few weeks, though it was unclear if the trips were to occur at the same time.

“They actually like each other, Lebanon and Israel,” Trump said.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa thanked Trump and Rubio for arranging the rare meeting between Lebanon and Israel.

“This is 60, 70 years in the making and today is really a historical day,” he said.

“I’m going to keep going, working for a peace that we hope we’ll get it as soon as possible.”

Earlier Thursday, a senior White House official told The New York Times the ambassador-level negotiations originally expected to take place at the State Department. Israeli officials confirmed the meeting with The Times of Israel.

The two countries agreed to a 10-day cease-fire agreement after a first round of talks in Washington, D.C., on April 17, which was the first meeting between Israel and Lebanon in decades. The truce is shaky, though, as Israeli airstrikes have occurred since then, with Hezbollah responding with its own rocket fire.

April 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day cease-fire starting at 5:00 p.m., pausing Israel’s six-week war on Hezbollah in that country.

Trump spoke with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, both leaders confirmed, and agreed to the cease-fire and to work toward a more permanent peace between their countries.

Aoun and Netanyahu spoke to each other separately because Aoun declined to participate in a call with the Israeli leader because Israel was still bombing Lebanon, CNN reported.

“These two Leaders have agreed that in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine have been directed to work with officials of both countries to achieve a more lasting peace.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in a statement thanked the United States, France, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan for helping to accomplish the cease-fire he had pursued “since the first day of the way,” NBC News reported.

After the United States and Israel launched the Iran war, Israel also launched offensives against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, from which it often launches attacks at Israel.

This week, delegates from the neighboring countries conducted diplomatic talks for the first time since 1993, meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss a cease-fire and the larger issue of Hezbollah’s hijacking of Lebanese lands in order to target Israel.

Netanayhu said Thursday in a video statement that Israeli forces would “remain in a 10-kilometer security zone, which will allow us to prevent infiltration into communities and anti-tank missile fire.”

Calling the negotiations potentially historic, Netanyahu said that Israel’s chief goal is to disarm Hezbollah and its ability to invade or launch weapons across the Lebanese border into Israel.

“That is where we will remain,” he said. “We are not leaving.”

After the diplomatic talks on Wednesday, Rubio reinforced that a key part of the meeting and now peace talks between the two nations is to end Hezbollah’s destabilizing influence in Lebanon and the wider Middle East.

“We have to remember the Lebanese people are victims of Hezbollah,” Rubio said, also noting that accomplishing a lasting peace “will take time.”

April 11 (UPI) — After an about-face by the Trump administration, Britain said it is pausing a plan to transfer ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius because it cannot complete the deal without U.S. support.

Britain on Friday said it is abandoning a deal to return sovereignty to the islands, which would have permitted the both countries to continue using the military base in Deigo Garcia they have operated since the 1970s, because there is not enough time for the U.K.’s parliament to pass a legislation on it, The Guardian reported.

The islands have been controlled by Britain since the 1800s, though in 1968 it granted independence to Maritius — which it also had controlled — but kept possession of the Chagos Islands.

President Donald Trump had in 2024 offered support for Britain to return the islands in return for continued use of the base, which includes billions in annual payments for doing so.

Trump withdrew his support for the deal earlier this year, calling it a “great act of stupidity,” less than a year after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration called the deal an “historic” achievement, at least partially because it kept the Diego Garcia base in use.

The change in opinion came, however, weeks before the United States and Israel started the war in Iran at the end of February because, he said at the time, the U.S. military may need to use the Diego Garcia base, The Hill reported.

“The U.K. had two objectives, one was to comply with international law, the second was to reinforce the relationship with the United States,” Simon McDonald, a former permanent secretary in Britain’s Foreign Office.

“When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government has to rethink, so this agreement, this treaty, will go into the deep freeze for the time being,” McDonald said.

The deal to return the islands to Maritius stems from an overall effort by Britain to reckon with its colonialist history, as well as a 2019 international court decision that said it had acted illegally by separating the Chagos from Maritius in the 1960s.

The military base on Diego Garcia, which dates to a 1966 treaty between Britain and the United States — which the two countries cleared people living in the area from in order to construct it — was to give the two nations a 99-year lease to continue operating the base.

While the Trump initially supported the deal, it has long been controversial in Britain, with Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, said it took too long for the current U.K. government to give up on it.

Badenoch said the government had dragged its feet on dropping the deal, calling it a “damning indictment of a prime minister, who fought to hand over British sovereign territory and pay $47 million to use a crucial military base which was already ours.”

April 8 (UPI) — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was set to kick off a visit to Washington on Wednesday with a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump after European allies’ lack of support for the Iran war prompted fresh threats to pull the United States out of the defensive alliance.

Rutte was expected to use the meeting, at which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will also be present, to try to smooth over trans-Atlantic tensions stoked by the refusal of several NATO countries to let U.S. military planes to use their airspace or bases.

Allies also declined to take part in military action to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, effectively blockaded by Iran since the start of the war on Feb. 28, and provide naval vessels to escort oil and gas tankers through the key sea lane.

Trump’s frustration with what he views as a NATO relationship that is unfairly weighted in European allies’ favor boiled over last week after the spat over the strait, with him questioning the point of U.S. membership and saying he would rethink how much the United States contributes to the alliance going forward.

Rubio has also adopted an increasingly hawkish stance calling it a “one-way street” where the United States was always there for other NATO members but was told ‘no’ when it needed to use their military bases, begging the question why it was in the alliance.

The position of European NATO allies is that they were not consulted before the United States launched its airborne offensive in Iran — with the majority of states were not even informed beforehand — and that as a purely defensive alliance, the action has no relevance to NATO.

Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker told Euronews that vocal criticism of military action against Iran expressed by countries including Germany, France, Spain and Finland ran counter to their own interests.

“The messaging from Europe has been terrible,” said Volker, explaining that it created an opening for Trump to deflect blame onto partners who refused assistance, if his Iran gambit backfires.

“The Europeans could have said, ‘we all have a stake in this and let’s see how we can help,'” added Volker who said this could have been achieved without getting pulled into direct military confrontation with Iran.

Patrick Bury, Senior Associate Professor in Warfare at Bath University, said Rutte had a delicate balancing act to perform of persuading Trump of the alliance’s value while as diplomatically as possible defending members’ right to stay out of the war

“His job is to keep the U.S. in NATO. He represents the alliance as a whole, rather than individual member states,” said Bury.

Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said if any one could talk Trump down it would be Rutte, calling him a “Trump whisperer.”

April 7 (UPI) — An Iran-backed militia freed an American journalist it kidnapped last month in a prisoner exchange with the Iraqi government, Iraqi and militia officials announced Tuesday.

The militia, Kataib Hezbollah, confirmed the release of Shelly Kittleson in response to negotiations with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani. Kataib Hezbollah representative Abu Mujahid al-Assaf said Kittleson was released “on the condition that she leaves the country immediately.”

“This initiative will not be repeated against in the coming days,” Assaf said. “We are in a state of war resembling that imposed by the american enemy against Islam, and in such situations, many considerations are set aside.”

Kataib Hezbollah abducted Kittleson in late March and set her free in a swap involving multiple members of the militia, Iraqi security officials told The New York Times. The Washington Post reported that it was believed Kittleson was held at Turf al-Sakhar, a stronghold of the militia about 40 miles north of Baghdad.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he extends his department’s appreciation to those who had assisted in securing her release, which he framed as a reflection of the Trump administration’s steadfast commitment to the safety and security of American citizens, no matter where they are in the world.”

“We are relieved that this American is now free and are working to support her safe departure from Iraq,” he said in a statement.

The National Press Club said it was “relieved” to learn of Kittleson’s release and hoped for her safe departure from Iraq.

“Today’s development is a welcome update for all those who believe in the ability for journalists to report safely and freely,” club president Mark Schoeff Jr. said in a statement.

“Her ordeal underscores the growing threats journalists face today as they do their jobs and report the truth.”

Kataib Hezbollah is a U.S.-designated terror organization and has links to Iran’s Quds Force, part of Iran’s military. It’s the second kidnapping of a foreign national by the group in Iraq in recent years.

In September, the group released Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israel-Russian citizen and Princeton University student, after more than two years of captivity.

Kittleson worked as a freelancer reporter for more than a decade in the Middle East.

Amid an escalation of regional violence in response to the war in Iran, the U.S. government urged all American citizens living in Iraq, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to leave as soon as possible.

According Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Trump, 106 Americans held in foreign countries have been released since January 2025.

“No man, or woman, left behind,” he said on X.

March 29 (UPI) — Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, issued a warning Saturday against a possible ground troop invasion as the U.S. military sends more troops to the region.

Ghalibaf made the comments in a message marking 30 days since the start of the war. The United States and Israel began strikes on Iran on Feb. 28 in their efforts to diminish the country’s nuclear weapons program.

Ghalibaf accused the United States of secretly planning a ground invasion of Iran. On Saturday, two U.S. ships arrived in the region carrying 3,500 U.S. service members as well as fighter jets, transport aircraft, amphibious assault vessels and other tactical assets. More troops were expected, U.S. Central Command said.

“The enemy publicly sends messages of negotiation while secretly planning a ground invasion — unaware that our men are waiting for American troops to enter on the ground, ready to unleash devastation upon them and punish their regional allies,” Ghalibaf said, as reported by CNN.

Last week, the Trump administration proposed a 15-point peace plan with Iran. President Donald Trump also ordered a 10-day halt on strikes against Iranian energy sites, though Israel carried out its own attacks on energy sites Friday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that Iran had not responded to the peace proposal.

“The United States speaks of its aspirations, presenting what it failed to achieve in war as a 15-point list to pursue through diplomacy,” Ghalibaf said.

“As long as the Americans seek Iran’s surrender, the answer of your sons remains clear: ‘Far be it from us to accept humiliation.'”

Ghalibaf’s message came in the wake of a Saturday report by The Washington Post that the Defense Department has drawn up plans for a weeks-long ground operation in Iran. Officials told The Post the plan isn’t considered a full-scale ground invasion, but would involve Special Operations forces and infantry troops.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement in response to the possibility of ground troops in Iran.

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander in chief maximum optionality,” she said. “It does not mean the president has made a decision.”

Iran has launched attacks on Israeli and other U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf region, including one Sunday on a military camp in Kuwait, which killed 10 Kuwaiti service members. The army said it detected 14 ballistic missiles and 12 hostile drones in Kuwaiti airspace over the previous 24 hours. Since the start of the war, it has monitored more than 300 ballistic missiles, 2 cruise missiles and more than 600 hostile drones.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials said emergency officials were working on a large fire that broke out at a hazardous materials factory at the Neot Hovav industrial complex, The Guardian reported. The Israeli military blamed “a weapon fragment or interceptor fragment” for the damage and fire.

March 20 (UPI) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gas field, an attack that escalated the war in the Middle East and prompted President Donald Trump to declare that the U.S. ally would not target the site again.

Israel attacked the South Pars field on Wednesday. In retaliation, Iran targeted major Persian Gulf energy facilities of U.S. allies, causing damage to Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City and the United Arab Emirates’ Bab gas field.

The tit-for-tat strikes have edged the region closer to all-out war while soaring the price of oil, leading Trump to state the United States had known nothing of Israel’s plans before it struck the South Pars gas field and to threaten Iran if it attacked Qatar again. He also said Israel would not attack Iranian energy infrastructure unless Iran attacked Qatar again.

Trump’s comments and his administration’s rationale for entering the war have come under scrutiny after reporting challenged his claim that Washington had no prior knowledge of the South Pars attack, while critics accused the United States of being lured into the war by Israel.

Speaking to reporters in English on Thursday, Netanyahu mostly backed Trump’s account, saying “Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound,” using the name of the nearby Iranian port and industrial complex that is often used as a shorthand for the gas field.

He did not directly address whether Trump or the United States knew of the attack beforehand, but pivoted to state that further attacks would not occur, as the American president had ordered.

“President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding off,” he said.

The press conference was held following reporting, including by CNN, citing U.S. and Israeli officials who said the attack had been conducted in coordination with the United States.

It was also held as accusations mount that the United States was dragged into the war by Israel. After the United States launched initial attacks with Israel on Feb. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that it was a preemptive strike to reduce U.S. casualties and deaths because they knew Israel was going to strike Iran and believed Tehran would retaliate against American forces.

The Trump administration has attempted to thwart the notion that Israel forced the United States into war, with officials repeatedly stating that Trump’s decision to attack was not influenced by others.

Netanyahu echoed this sentiment.

“Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on,” he said. “President Trump always makes his decision on what he thinks is good for America, and may I add, I think what is also good for future generations.”

March 19 (UPI) — The FBI is investigating Joe Kent, who resigned this week as the counterterrorism director in protest over the war with Iran, over allegations that he leaked classified information, according to reports, while Trump administration officials attack his credibility.

Kent resigned Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a position to which the MAGA supporter and far-right conspiracy theorist with ties to White nationalist groups was nominated in early 2025 by President Donald Trump, stating that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.”

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he said.

The FBI investigation into Kent predates his resignation, unidentified sources told Semafor, the first to report on the development. The New York Times, NewsNation and others have since corroborated that story.

Kent is the first senior Trump administration official to resign over the war that has divided Republicans and supporters of the president, who campaigned on ending conflicts while warning Americans that if the Democrats were to return to the White House, the United States would be lured into a war with Iran.

Little information about the allegations against Kent was known. The revelations of the investigation come as the White House was attempting to undermine and dismiss the man Trump had repeatedly called “a Great American Hero” for his service as a soldier, Green Beret and CIA officer.

In his resignation letter, Kent argued that Trump was pulled into the war by Israel, claiming the Middle Eastern country had deployed a disinformation campaign to convince Americans that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.

Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he thought of Kent as a “nice guy” who was “very weak on security.”

“I didn’t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But when I read his statement I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refuted the allegation as “insulting and laughable.” Speaking to reporters Wednesday, she attempted to distance Trump from Kent, saying he has not been involved with the president’s intelligence briefings for several months and has not been seen at the White House “for quite some time.”

“The president feels it is deeply disappointing that after the president gave him an opportunity in this administration to serve the American people that he would resign with a letter filled with falsehoods — accusing the president of the United States of being controlled by a foreign country.”

The war began late last month after the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the U.S. attack on Iran was preemptive. He said they knew Israel was going to attack Iran, which would result in Iran attacking U.S. bases and allies in the region.

The U.S. attack was intended to preempt an Iranian response, he said.

March 17 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has designated a Jewish Iranian-American imprisoned for nearly a year in Iran as wrongfully detained, according to his family.

Kamran Hekmati, a jeweler and longtime resident of Great Neck, N.Y., was detained by Iranian authorities at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on May 17, according to the Bring Kamran Home website.

He was in the country for a family matter, and was detained while attempting to return to the United States. The website states he was formally arrested on July 28, less than two weeks after the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.

His family told UPI in a statement that they were notified on Monday of Rubio’s designation, an official recognition that the United States believes Hekmati is being held in Iran on false charges.

“We are so grateful to President [Donald] Trump and Secretary Rubio for their designation of Kamran Hekmati as a wrongful detainee,” Shohreh Nowfar, Hekmati’s cousin, said in a statement provided to UPI by Global Reach, a U.S. nonprofit that advocates for Americans imprisoned abroad.

“It reassures us that our government has our back in the effort to get Kamran home safely.”

UPI has contacted the State Department for comment and confirmation. Its Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs becomes involved once an American citizen is determined to be wrongfully detained.

Hekmati emigrated to the United States following the 1979 revolution.

According to his website, Hekmati was charged with allegedly visiting Israel within the last 10 years based on photos found on his phone of a trip he took to the country for his son’s bar mitzvah. He was sentenced to two years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. Advocates said the trip took place 13 years ago.

Hekmati was detained amid growing tensions between the allies, the United States and Israel, and Iran. Iranian authorities formally charged him two weeks after the Trump administration bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.

He was again charged by Iran in December as tensions rose in the Middle East. Tehran authorities accuse him of meeting with agents of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

He is reportedly a bladder cancer survivor but requires regular medical testing and preventive medical procedures to guard against its recurrence.

“Kamran appears to be caught up in Iran’s traditional approach of detaining Americans to obtain political concessions from the U.S.,” his advocacy website states.

The announcement comes months after Reps. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, and Claudia Tenney, a Republican, both from New York, urged Rubio in an early December letter to secure Hekmati’s release and to designate him as wrongfully detained.

Rubio designated Iran a state sponsor of wrongful detention on Feb. 27, a day before the United States and Israel launched their ongoing war with Tehran.

Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh — arrested by Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in September 2024 and sentenced to 10 years in prison — was also officially designated as wrongfully detained in May.

Nowfar told UPI that the wrongfully detained designation made clear “that the senior-most people in the White House know that Kamran, Reza and the others are being held by the Iranians and conveyed to the Iranians that they will be held accountable for their safety.”