Taiwanese vendor QNAP is warning customers to install QTS and QuTS firmware updates to address a critical flaw impacting its NAS devices.

QNAP released QTS and QuTS firmware updates to address a critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-27596 (CVSS v3 score: 9.8), that affects QNAP NAS devices.

A remote attacker can exploit the vulnerability to inject malicious code on QNAP NAS devices. The flaw is easy to exploit without user interaction or privileges on the vulnerable device.

The flaw impacts QTS 5.0.1 and QuTS hero h5.0.1 versions.

“A vulnerability has been reported to affect QNAP devices running QTS 5.0.1 and QuTS hero h5.0.1. If exploited, this vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject malicious code.” reads the advisory published by the Taiwanese vendor.

“We have already fixed this vulnerability in the following operating system versions:

• QTS 5.0.1.2234 build 20221201 and later
• QuTS hero h5.0.1.2248 build 20221215 and later”

Below is the step-by-step procedure to update QTS or QuTS hero:

1. Log in to QTS or QuTS hero as an administrator.
2. Go to Control Panel > System > Firmware Update.
3. Under Live Update, click Check for Update.
   QTS or QuTS hero downloads and installs the latest available update.

Users can also download the update from the QNAP website by going to Support > Download Center and then performing a manual update for their specific device.

The company urges customers to apply security updates as soon as possible.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Moshen Dragon)

The post QNAP addresses a critical flaw impacting its NAS devices appeared first on Security Affairs.

(Reuters) – The legal director of a leading LGBTQ advocacy group on Monday said he is preparing a lawsuit to ask courts to block a new Utah law that prohibits nearly all gender-transition medical care for minors.

“We’re working with the ACLU of Utah on putting a challenge together as soon as possible,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told Reuters.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Saturday signed into law a bill that prohibits surgical procedures on minors and indefinitely bans hormonal treatments for new minor patients. It takes effect immediately.

“More and more experts, states and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences,” Cox said in a written statement.

Minter called the Utah bill one of the most extreme of a range of measures now before over two dozen state legislatures.

Four other states – Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Tennessee – have also passed laws that restrict gender-transition medical care for minors. Judges have temporarily blocked the laws in Alabama and Arkansas.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott last year said medical care for transitions constituted child abuse and ordered a state agency to investigate parents of transgender youth who received treatment. Dozens of restrictive bills are now before Texas legislators.

Gender-affirming care covers letting children adopt a name and dress that aligns with their gender identity, as well as psychological treatment, prescribing hormone blockers and, in some cases, surgery.

Numerous medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, call such treatments potentially life saving.

The number of gender clinics treating kids in the United States has gone from zero to more than 100 in the past 15 years, Reuters reporting has found, but strong evidence of the efficacy and possible long-term consequences of such treatment remains scant.

Minter said the rash of Republican-backed anti-transition care bills now before state lawmakers amounted to “a kind of hysteria, a mob mentality.”

“This involves a very small group of kids with a rare medical condition,” he said. “When kids get the treatment and support they need, they do really well.”

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in Tel Aviv on Monday, he arrived to a dangerous escalation of violence following days of tit-for-tat bloodshed in Israel and the occupied West Bank. Between Thursday’s deadly Israeli army raid in the West Bank city of Jenin and a shooting attack near an East Jerusalem synagogue on Friday, more than a dozen people have been killed. Analysts and observers fear that the situation, if not calmed, will only get worse.

But the rise in violence is hardly the only matter on Blinken’s agenda. The Biden administration has grown increasingly concerned over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to limit the power of the judiciary and Israel’s expanding settlements in occupied Palestinian land—not to mention policies that would amount to de facto annexation of the West Bank. These issues loom large over Blinken’s arrival, the third such visit by a senior U.S. official since last month’s inauguration of Israel’s most hardline government yet. In the run up to the trip, the State Department said that Blinken would use the meeting to reiterate Washington’s ostensible commitment to a two-state solution and to “the protection of human rights and democratic values.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

While diplomacy-speak can often be repetitive and underwhelming, the emphasis on democratic values when it comes to Israel is a relatively new one that reflects growing unease in Washington over Israel’s direction. The country’s lurch to the right has drawn the ire of some of Israel’s most stalwart supporters in Congress. Their concern, echoed by experts and pollsters, is that a hardline Israeli government risks eroding its relationship with the U.S., perhaps severely. Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel and former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, warned that the the relationship “will come under strain” should Netanyahu’s coalition prevail with its illiberal and territorial aims.

Read More: Liberal Israelis Fear for the Future of Democracy

“The more things get out of hand in the West Bank, either from settlement activity or from violence, the more pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party on [President Joe Biden] will grow,” Indyk says. “While he will resist it, because he is fundamentally pro-Israel, nevertheless he can’t ignore it.”

While the U.S.-Israel relationship is often described as an “unbreakable bond,” fortified by deep security cooperation and nearly $4 billion in U.S. military aid each year, it isn’t immune to internal pressure. In recent years, more liberal voices within the Democratic Party have proven more willing to call out human-rights abuses, from the Israeli government’s eviction of Palestinian families to the Israeli military’s detention of Palestinian children. They are slowly being joined by more moderate Democrats, some of whom are considered to be among Israel’s strongest advocates on Capitol Hill. Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a stalwart supporter of Israel, reportedly warned Netanyahu that forming a government with far-right figures like Itmar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, as he eventually did, would harm bilateral ties. Sen. Jacky Rosen, who co-leads the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus in support of the normalization deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, refused to meet with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich during a visit to the country earlier this month. Two other pro-Israel Democrats, Rep. Brad Sherman and Rep. Jerry Nadler, each warned in recent days that the Israeli government’s plans to weaken the judiciary would “risk U.S. support” and leave the relationship “irrevocably strained.”

This tonal shift isn’t limited to Washington. Among ordinary Americans, there has been a notable shift in public opinion surrounding U.S. policy toward Israel—one that has become markedly more partisan. According to a July survey by the Pew Research Center, 55% of Americans have a favorable view of Israel compared to 41% that don’t, a position that is closely correlated to age (a majority of Americans aged 50 and up have positive views of the country compared to less than half of those under 50) and party affiliation (71% of Republicans have a favorable view of Israel, compared to just 44% of Democrats).

Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert and pollster at the University of Maryland, says that although Congress remains more broadly supportive of Israel than the American public, the shift in opinion has given some lawmakers license to be more openly critical of Israeli policy. “When you talk to members of Congress, they have been far more aware of the tilt in American policy on this issue,” says Telhami, noting that the expressed policies of the current Israeli government will “make it impossible for people to ignore and creates fissures even among people who have wanted to look the other way.”

Read More: The Delicate Status Quo Around Jerusalem’s Holiest Site Is Unraveling

While the Overton window on Israel has somewhat shifted in Washington, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the most prominent Palestinian American voice in Congress, believes that there is a long way to go in ensuring that the U.S. no longer supports a status quo that runs counter to its values. Israel “can be a Jewish state that is of equality and justice and is safe for everyone who lives there, [including] my grandmother,” says Tlaib, who has family in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. “The only way we’re going to be able to ensure that everyone is safe, that the violence stops, is when we stop with the blank check.” (Tlaib is among a minority of Democratic lawmakers who support leveraging U.S. aid in order to change Israeli policy toward Palestinians and the occupied territories.)

In a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu hit back at the criticism over his government’s planned judicial overhaul, asserting that Israel and the U.S. “will remain, I assure you, two strong democracies.” Blinken, meanwhile, reaffirmed that U.S. support for Israel remains “ironclad” and that the relationship between the two countries continues to be rooted in shared interests and values such as “support for core democratic principles and institutions” and “a robust civil society,” the latter of which Blinken said was “on full display of late,” in a not-so-veiled reference to a recent mass protest against the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms.

But whether the U.S. continues to regard Israel as such will depend largely on how much pressure Washington can exert on Netanyahu, whose hold on power relies on the support of his hardline coalition partners. “Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have a very clear, ideologically-driven agenda that relates directly to annexation of the West Bank in one way or another—that’s their fundamental objective,” says Indyk. “They know that there’s going to be American objections, but they’re going to run up against it.” Indeed, Ben-Gvir already made a provocative visit to Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque compound earlier this month, in violation of the holy site’s delicate status quo.

Such an approach risks straining Washington’s support for Tel Aviv by making Israel a point of contention not just when it comes to matters of human rights, but also democracy. Biden has made promoting democracy in the fight against authoritarianism the mainstay of his foreign policy. “If they’re going to become an illiberal democracy on the lines of the Hungarian and Polish models,” says Indyk, “that is going to impact the relationship.”

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s new minister of diaspora affairs, touched down in the U.S. as American Jews organized protests against his government, the most right-wing in the nation’s history. These rallies are smaller than those in Israel, but their participants are as fearful as their Israeli counterparts that the country is veering away from democracy and pluralism, and taking a dangerously combative tack against Palestinians.

This makes Chikli’s job — to strengthen ties between Israel and Jews abroad, most of whom live in the U.S. — exceptionally tough. The alliance had deteriorated under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who led Israel for a dozen years and, thanks to the November elections, leads it once again. This time he is flanked by coalition partners that many call extreme. They have backed legislation to curb the power of the high court and proposed changes to the law of return that would narrow the pool of people to which it would apply. Many American Jews were unnerved last week by an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin that left 10 dead, and the deadly terror attack at a Jerusalem synagogue Friday that killed seven. 

American Jews, the vast majority of whom vote against right wing candidates in their own country, feel increasingly discouraged with Israel. 

Chikli, 41, who landed the ministry job because he has been willing to make bold political moves and challenge members of his own party, is painfully aware of the disconnect. But he said in a recent interview that he believes Jews abroad still need to be heard by Israel. “We don’t have better ambassadors than the Jewish communities in diaspora,” he said. “Their voice is very important, and they all genuinely love Israel.” 

In the U.S. last week, Chikli sought to assuage Americans’ concerns about the future of Israeli democracy. 

But at the same time, he placed blame on the Israeli opposition and media for what he said was American Jews’ wrongheaded understanding of the Jewish state’s new leadership. He charged that they are being “greatly influenced” by relentless attacks on the new government. And he blamed Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and the current opposition leader, for “causing massive damage” to U.S.-Israel relations and the Israel-diaspora relationship. 

Listening — but not to everyone 

In his brief visit to the U.S., Chikli packed his schedule, meeting with leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox streams of Judaism, as well as the heads of the Jewish Federations of North America, UJA-Federation of New York, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. He met with the board of Momentum Project, a group sponsored by the Israeli government that seeks to strengthen Jewish identity and connection to Israel. He also addressed an annual conference hosted by the Israeli American Council, a group of ex-pat Israelis, in Austin, Texas. 

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs, at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Jan. 29, 2023. Courtesy of Amichai Chikli

He refused to meet, however, with the leadership of J Street, the prominent liberal advocacy organization that calls itself “the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans.” Chikli called the group “hostile to Zionism and the state of Israel.” He said its lobbying supports policies that “serve Iran and the Palestinian Authority” and “advances antisemitic trends.” Ron Dermer, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. who is now the minister for strategic affairs, also snubbed the group during his tenure in Washington, D.C.

Logan Bayroff, a J Street spokesperson, called it “self-defeating and short-sighted” for the government of Israel to refuse to meet with the group. “Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people, not just those who agree with Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir,” Baayroff said, referring to Israel’s national security minister, who has been much criticized for inflaming tensions with Palestinians. He noted that J Street’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its focus on democracy are shared by a large portion of  U.S. Jews. “It shows just how deeply out of touch this government is with much of our community,” he said.

Chikli himself is a hardliner on the conflict. He has called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “one of the greatest Holocaust deniers of our generation and a distinct antisemite” for accusing Israel of carrying out “50 Holocausts” of Palestinians as he stood alongside the German chancellor in Berlin last year. On Sunday Chikli called the Palestinian Authority a “neo-Nazi entity.”

“We may disagree on policy and criticism is welcome, but all we ask is the trust and backing from diaspora Jews,” he said. 

From Camp Ramah to the cabinet 

The son of an ordained Conservative rabbi, and an alum of Camp Ramah, a network of Jewish summer camps affiliated with the Conservative Movement, Chikli fashions himself as an independent who speaks his mind. In an interview with the Forward in 2021, Chikli said he had visited the U.S. numerous times and suggested that many American Jews are affiliated with “an anti-nationalistic, anti-liberal” ideology that will disconnect them from their ethnic origins. 

“I have the ability to create an open and frank dialogue — though unapologetic — with American Jews,” Chikli said in last week’s phone interview, adding that his views “haven’t changed one iota” since he was in the political opposition.

He came to prominence in Israeli politics just weeks after he entered the Knesset in 2021 as the lone conservative rebel in the previous government. Formerly a member of the rightist Yamina party, Chikli accused its leader, Naftali Bennett, of allying with the left and an Arab-Israeli party for personal gain. Bennet’s government lost its majority last April after additional members of  Yamina quit the coalition.   

Amichai Chikli at the Knesset on Dec. 6, 2022. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90

After joining the Likud Party and following the election, Chikli asked to lead the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, the Ministry for Social Equality, and also to head the campaign against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. 

Netanyahu gave it all to him.

On Sunday, Chikli presented a comprehensive report about antisemitism in the diaspora at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He related the rise in antisemitic incidents to a hostile atmosphere towards Jewish students on college campuses, and told his colleagues that he is working on a strategy to combat it. 

On the offensive 

As much as Chikli presented his trip as a listening tour, he also came to talk — to explain his government’s thinking behind initiatives critics have labeled anti-democratic.

Currently Israeli Supreme Court judges are appointed by a committee that includes some, but not a majority, of lawmakers. A new government plan would give them a majority, a move the opposition said would politicize the judiciary. Chikli called it “ridiculous” to claim that the present method of seating judges is normal or “even close to what is custom in other western countries.” 

He urged American Jews to await committee hearings and Knesset debate on the issue before drawing conclusions. “There will be changes,” he said. 

He also dismissed concerns about proposed changes to the Law of Return, which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to immigrate to Israel as long as they do not practice another religion. Some American Jewish groups have warned that restricting immigration by abolishing the so-called “grandchild clause” will alienate the diaspora.

Chikli in response referred to a presentation — prepared by a right-wing think tank, the Kohelet Policy Forum — that forecast that a majority of immigrants eligible for Israeli citizenship in the future would not be Jews, but mostly non-Jewish immigrants from former Soviet republics, Russia and Ukraine. “Right now, the law is broken and it’s costing us dearly,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior cabinet ministers at the Knesset on December 29, 2022. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images

But he said he told Jewish leaders he would serve as their conduit to the committee that will consider the bill and that he believes that, unlike decisions on homeland security and the economy, the concerns of Jewish leaders abroad should be taken into consideration as immigration reform is legislated.

The Likud politician said that religious matters concerning conversion, kashrut and the 2017 Kotel deal, which designated protected space at the Western Wall for various streams of Jewish practice, didn’t come up in his meetings with Americans. And he said he doesn’t foresee any legislation that would change the status quo at this point. 

“We just had an election and the results were crystal clear,” Chikli said about the positions of the new government. “We were very honest about our agenda, and it is our responsibility to follow this agenda.” 

The post Israeli emissary blames political foes for eroding relations with American Jews appeared first on The Forward.

Some people make careers out of paper shredding. It’s big business. These days, it’s all about safety. And many Americans do not want any paper trails with all of their personal information. So they get document destroyers to make sure all their excess papers are permanently wiped out.

But in the state of Arizona, thanks to a new ruling, any politician can be a paper destroyer. Republican lawmakers in the state of Arizona have granted themselves the right to destroy, discard, or erase — any documents they please after a period of 90 days.

This story first reported by the Washington post says that legislators are now allowed to get rid of the following: Emails. Papers. Texts. In other words, republicans have exempted themselves from the public records laws of Arizona. They can get rid of anything they damn well want after a period of three months.

I imagine the Arizona paper shredders are going to be getting a heck of a lot of business. The Democrats, of course, opposed this law, but Republicans voted it in anyway. This might just have something to do with all the emails and texts Republicans were forced to release while they were engaged in fake partisan reviews of the 2020 election. As you may imagine, republicans were NOT happy about having to make all that public.

You see, even though Arizona now has a Democratic governor, their house and senate still have a Republican majority. The politics in Arizona are severely screwed up. But this is what Republicans voted for. They don’t want a paper trail, and now they’re not going to have one.

The post Arizona Republicans go off the rails with insane new legislation appeared first on Palmer Report.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The Memphis Police Department has disciplined an officer involved in the arrest, beating and death of Tyre Nichols, the department said Monday, widening the circle of punishment for a killing that has already led to the murder indictment of five officers and outraged the nation with another display of police brutality.

Officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, was relieved of duty shortly after Nichols’ Jan. 7 arrest, the department said. Five Black officers were fired and charged last week with second-degree murder and other offenses in Nichols’ beating and death.

Three Memphis Fire Department members were also fired, the department announced on Monday.

“Their actions or inactions on the scene that night do not meet the expectations of the Memphis Fire Department and are not reflective of the outstanding service the men and women of the Memphis Fire Department provide daily to our community,” a statement read in part. The fired members are EMTs Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge as well as Lt. Michelle Whitaker.

The killing of Nichols, who was also Black, has led to days of public discussion of how police forces can treat Black citizens with excessive violence, regardless of the race of both the police officers and the people being policed.

On body camera footage from the initial stop, Hemphill is heard saying that he stunned Nichols and declaring, “I hope they stomp his ass.”

Nichols’ death was the latest example in a long string of early police accounts regarding use of force that were later shown to have minimized or ignored violent and sometimes deadly encounters.

Memphis Police Department officers used a stun gun, a baton and their fists as they pummeled Nichols during the nighttime arrest. Footage shows Nichols running away from officers toward his house after he was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving. Nichols, a 29-year-old father, was heard calling for his mother and seen struggling with his injuries as he sat helpless on the pavement, video footage released Friday showed.

The five officers chatted and milled about for several minutes as Nichols remained in the ground, but there were other authorities on the scene. Two Shelby County sheriff’s deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated. Two Memphis Fire Department workers were also removed from duty over Nichols’ arrest.

The police department is responsible for internal disciplinary measures, such as firings, while the Shelby County’s district attorney handles criminal investigations.

Hemphill was the third officer at a traffic stop that preceded the violent arrest but was not at the scene where Nichols was beaten, his lawyer Lee Gerald said.

Lawyers for the Nichols family, questioned Monday why the department did not disclose Hemphill’s discipline earlier and why he has not been fired or charged.

“We have asked from the beginning that the Memphis Police Department be transparent with the family and the community – this news seems to indicate that they haven’t risen to the occasion,” said the statement from Ben Crump and Anthony Romanucci,. “It certainly begs the question why the white officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye, and to date, from sufficient discipline and accountability.”

Memphis police spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said information on disciplinary action taken against Hemphill was not immediately released because Hemphill was not fired. The department generally only gives out information about an officer’s punishment after a department investigation into police misconduct ends, Rudolph said.

Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that a “lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem.”

“When officers are working, you should have at least one supervisor for every group or squad of people,” David said. “Not just somebody who’s at the office doing the paperwork, somebody who’s actually embedded in that unit.”

Calls for more officers to be fired or charged have been loud and persistent from the Nichols family, their lawyers, and community activists who have peacefully protested in Memphis since the video was released. The video was evocative of the arrest of George Floyd in 2020 and officers’ failure to intervene.

On Saturday, Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, told The Associated Press that the family was going to “continue to seek justice and get some more officers arrested.”

“Questions were raised before the video was released, I raised those questions,” Wells said. “I just felt there was more than five officers out there. Now, five were charged with murder because they were the main participants, but there were five or six other officers out there that didn’t do anything to render any aid. So they are just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”

Memphis City Council member Martavius Jones said he watched the video with colleagues on Friday. He acknowledged Monday that Memphis police policies of failure to render aid and de-escalation appeared to have been violated.

“When everybody saw the video, we see that you have multiple officers just standing around, when Mr. Nichols is in distress, that just paints a totally different picture,” Jones said

Jones said he believes more officers should be disciplined.

“At this point, what’s going to be helpful for this community is to see how swiftly the police chief deals with those other officers now that everybody has seen the tape and knows that is wasn’t only five officers who were at the scene the entire time,” Jones said.

The five fired officers and Hemphill were part of the so-called Scorpion unit, which targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas. Davis, the police chief, said Saturday that the unit has been disbanded.

Nichols’ funeral service is scheduled for Wednesday at a Memphis church.

© Copyright 2023 Associated Press. All rights reserved

Utah governor Spencer Cox (R.) signed a bill Saturday that prohibits gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers for minors in most cases.

The Transgender Medical Treatments and Procedures Amendments, introduced by state senator and family physician Mike Kennedy (R.), prohibits “permanent and life-altering” gender transition treatments for minors and bans puberty blockers for any patient not already diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

“While not a perfect bill, we are grateful for Sen. Kennedy’s more nuanced and thoughtful approach to this terribly divisive issue,” Cox said in a statement Saturday. “More and more experts, states, and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences.”

While Utah is the first state to sign such a bill into law this year, 10 other state legislatures are prioritizing similar bills in the beginning weeks of their 2023 sessions.

“While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” Cox said.

The bill passed the Republican-led Senate and House, with all Democratic representatives opposing the bill. State senators Luz Escamilla (D.) and Jen Plumb (D.) cried as they expressed their opposition to the bill.

“We will continue to work as a commitment of the Senate Democrats to work for good public policy,” Escamilla said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah petitioned the governor to veto the bill, expressing concern about “the damaging and potentially catastrophic effects this law will have on people’s lives and medical care and the grave violations of people’s constitutional rights it will cause.”

“All of our intent is not to harm but to help. All of this is focused on the fact that we are trying to help children and families even though I deeply respect there are many that are not in agreement with that sentiment,” Kennedy said in defense of the bill.

The post Utah Bans Puberty Blockers and Gender Transitioning Surgeries for Minors appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

A weekend attack on an Iranian military facility was likely orchestrated by Israel and is part of an escalating tit-for-tat between the countries that shows Israel is growing bolder about striking Iranian weapons facilities, according to former U.S. officials and intelligence sources.

Explosions rocked an Iranian military site in Isfahan early Sunday, with U.S. officials indicating that Israel’s Mossad conducted the attack using remote drones. While Israel has not confirmed its responsibility, sources told the Washington Free Beacon that the attack shows Israel has the military capability to strike within Iran and is not concerned with the possible repercussions of confronting the Iranian regime.

“The Israeli strikes inside Iran demonstrate that Israel views the regime as both weak and dangerous,” Gabriel Noronha, a former senior Iran adviser at the State Department during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon. “Israel also views Iran as weak if it is willing to make such an overt strike inside the country.”

Israel is believed to be targeting Iranian ballistic missile factories producing weapons the Islamic Republic could use in a war with the Jewish state. This weekend’s attack sent a message to Iran that its most vital military facilities are not immune to an Israeli operation. The latest strike also came days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel for high-level meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, underscoring that the conservative Israeli leader is willing to risk a full-blown confrontation with Iran even as the Biden administration continues to pursue diplomacy aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal, according to sources who spoke to the Free Beacon.

“The target of ballistic missile facilities is important: In the event of an Iranian-Israeli war, ballistic missiles will serve as the greatest threat to Israeli lives and cities,” Noronha said. “Dealing a blow to their production capabilities is a smart move to kneecap the regime in the medium-term, but Israel better hope it knows how to eliminate the missile stockpiles too in the event of a war.”

While it remains unclear what exactly the Isfahan military facility was producing, U.S. officials pinned the strike on Israel’s Mossad, the country’s secret service, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon also said Israel is the most likely source of the attack. It is not likely the attack was aimed at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, they said, but rather its missile capabilities.

“I suspect this has more to do with missiles,” Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told the Free Beacon. “Iran has openly bragged about its increasing precision, and the Israelis might have reason to take them at their word. At the same time, the Israelis are also signaling they can do this at will.”

Mysterious fires and explosions have rocked several Iranian military sites in the past few years, including a 2021 act of sabotage at the Natanz nuclear site. A year before that attack, the Natanz complex caught on fire. Both strikes, as well as others, are believed to have been conducted by Israel, and Iran has struck back by targeting Israeli interests in the region.

Israel is believed to have the resources and networks needed to launch drone strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets from territory in Iraq, according to the former military official, who spoke on background about this information. Outposts in Iraq are making it easier for Israel to conduct attacks like the one that took place over the weekend.

“It’s an intentional message to Iran that ‘we can hit you from places you think you control,'” the official said. “We will continue to target the IRGC and its proxies inside Iraq with impunity and inside Iran to show our reach.”

Israel conducted several airstrikes inside Iraq at will over the last four years, according to Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer and Middle East scholar at the Hudson Institute. The Iraqi people did not protest Israel’s attacks on the IRGC Quds Force’s rocket and missile depots in a sign of support for these operations. “The reason,” Pregent said, is “the attacks were viewed as justified attacks on Iran’s destabilizing activity in Iraq and the Levant.”

Iranian officials sought to downplay the attack, claiming they successfully warded off the drones and that only minor damage was caused to one building.

“This cowardly act was carried out today as part of efforts made by the enemies of the Iranian nation in recent months to make the Islamic Republic insecure,” Iranian foreign minister Amir-Abdollahian said over the weekend.

Iranian officials also said Russia is helping to investigate the incident, highlighting the Kremlin’s interest in ensuring Iranian drone and missile factories remain online. Iran has been supplying Moscow with drone technology for use in its unprovoked war in Ukraine. It remains unclear at this point if Israel hit the facility with this aspect in mind.

The State Department declined to comment.

During a joint press conference with Blinken on Monday afternoon, Netanyahu said Israel’s policy, “and my policy, is to do everything within Israel’s power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. And that will remain so.”

A Pentagon spokesman denied any U.S. role in the attack in comments to CNN.

“We’ve seen the press reports, but can confirm that no U.S. military forces have conducted strikes or operations inside Iran,” the spokesman told CNN on Monday. “We continue to monitor the situation, but have nothing further to provide.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised Israel’s action and said the Biden administration’s policy of diplomacy with Tehran continues to endanger American allies in the region.

“By striking a military target in Iran, Israel has taken decisive action against the primary force of instability in the region and the leading sponsor of terror throughout the globe,” Issa said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s Iran policy has been muddled and muted, save for when it wasn’t openly appeasing Iran and agreeing to one concession after another.”

The post Suspected Israeli Drone Attack on Iran Signals Growing Appetite for Confrontation With Islamic Republic appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The Libertarian Party wants to gut the Pentagon’s budget, close all overseas American military bases, and dismantle the CIA. And it has tapped a convicted child sex predator to make its pitch in Washington.

Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector, is slated to speak at “Rage Against the War Machine,” which the Libertarian Party is organizing at the Lincoln Memorial on Feb. 19. Ritter was charged in 2001 with attempting to solicit an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl in an online chat and again in 2009 with exposing himself online to an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. Ritter was sentenced in October 2011 to up to five years in prison. He was paroled in 2014.

The Libertarians are embracing Ritter even as other isolationist groups cut ties with him over his predilection for underage girls. In 2021, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an isolationist think tank funded by George Soros and Charles Koch, removed an article from Ritter, which downplayed Russia’s cyber attacks, following outcry over his convictions for solicitation of minors. But Ritter has remained active in isolationist foreign policy circles. He spoke last year at a Ron Paul Institute event and contributes to Russian state propaganda outlet Russia Today.

The Libertarian Party and its event partners released a 10-point list of demands aimed at weakening U.S. defense. They are calling to “close all U.S. military bases abroad,” “cut the military budget in half,” and dismantle the CIA. The coalition also blames the United States for Russia’s war against Ukraine, in which Russian forces have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. The coalition makes the unfounded claim that the United States “instigated” the war by helping overthrow Ukraine’s Russia-backed president in 2014.

Ritter will appear alongside numerous other activists critical of U.S. foreign policy. Anti-Israel activists Max Blumenthal and Medea Benjamin are listed as speakers alongside Ritter. Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, will also speak at the event.

Ritter’s sordid past goes unmentioned in his bio for the event. It instead highlights his role on the United Nations Special Commission’s weapons inspection team in Iraq, on which he served from 1991 to 1998.

The Libertarian Party did not respond to a request for comment.

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