‘It’s entombed’: Trump says US can retrieve Iran’s uranium without a deal, but has ‘no reason to’

‘It’s entombed’: Trump says US can retrieve Iran’s uranium without a deal, but has ‘no reason to’

ToI Staff

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that American forces could remove Iran’s enriched uranium even without Washington making a deal with the Islamic Republic, but that “there’s no reason to,” because, he said, the regime can’t access it anyway.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump revealed that he had considered sending US troops to retrieve the buried stockpile at the very start of the war, but chose not to do so because of the risks and potential complications.

“I didn’t feel like being like Jimmy Carter,” he said, alluding to the former president’s failed effort to rescue 52 US Embassy staff held hostage by Iran in 1980.

Trump again claimed that a deal with Iran would ensure the removal or disposal of the uranium, something Iran has denied accepting. “As it stands right now, we will go in, in the not too distant future [to deal with the underground stockpile by agreement],” he said.

“We could get it right now. I don’t think they could stop us if we wanted, but there’s no reason to. It’s entombed,” the president said.

“It’s very safe down there,” he added. “We have cameras; every angle of those three [underground nuclear] sites are being watched at all times. If anybody went there, we’ll see exactly what’s happening and we’ll blow it up a little bit further….”

“[It’s ] very hard to get that material, but I still nevertheless want it,” he said, but added: “I don’t want to do it if we’re in conflict. I don’t want to put men in that kind of danger.”

Trump detailed, for the first time, a plan he said he did not approve that would have sent American troops into Iran to collect what he commonly calls the “nuclear dust.”

“I didn’t want to be in a position where you had…,” he said, then paused before resuming: “It’s not like Venezuela — like, you go in, you’re there for a matter of minutes and you’re out. And everybody’s waving goodbye as you take off,” he elaborated.

“This is different. You have to be there for two weeks. You’d need massive equipment. You’d have to airlift the equipment.”

“There was a time at the very beginning when we thought about doing that, because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out,” he added.

Previously, Trump has insisted on the need to remove or destroy Iran’s stockpile of some 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium — a short step from weapons-grade.

Nuclear experts have also urged the US to require the removal of all uranium enriched by Iran to lower levels, to better block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Trump’s apparently shifting stance regarding the uranium stockpile followed his recent backing away from his previous demand for an end to all Iranian enrichment, saying on May 15 that he would accept a 20-year suspension of uranium enrichment.

Iran, which regularly vows to destroy Israel, denies it has ever sought nuclear weapons, but its enrichment has gone far beyond the levels required for a civilian program, and it has obstructed inspectors from accessing its facilities.

Trump also said Thursday that he was not looking to meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, but said that he’d “be honored” to do so.

Trump said if Washington and Tehran reached a deal, it was possible that the two would meet and added, “If it happened… I’d be respectful.”

“In some circles, he has a very good reputation actually,” he said of Khamenei.

Substituting The Government For The Family: In First Set Back To Homeschooling In Decades, Connecticut Declares War

Substituting The Government For The Family: In First Set Back To Homeschooling In Decades, Connecticut Declares War

Alex Newman

Connecticut officials just adopted the first major new restriction on homeschooling in America in decades, forcing parents to seek permission from “child welfare” authorities while imposing a slew of new regulations on families who exit government schools. Advocates for home education blasted the move. And they vowed to fight on. 

The legislation, known as House Bill 5468 and signed into law as Public Act 26-37 or “An Act Concerning the Provision of Parent-Managed Learning,” treats all homeschool families as guilty until proven innocent, critics said. Before starting to homeschool, parents must report to the government and receive approval from the Department of Children and Families to proceed.

The unprecedented measure also purports to force parents to provide government-approved “education.” Language ordering homeschoolers to have “equivalent instruction” to government’s was removed. But the final bill signed into law by Governor Ned Lamont last week still decrees that parents must follow the studies taught in government schools.

The bill was so controversial that all Republicans and even some Democrats voted against it. But even with no GOP support, the legislation was approved by the House in a 96 to 53 vote and 22 to 14 by the Senate. Thousands of concerned citizens spoke out and testified against the bill, while just a handful expressed support.

“The state has a responsibility to protect children,” argued State Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney, a Democrat, before voting to support the controversial bill. “In other words, it’s not only the parents who have a responsibility for those children.” He did not mention the epidemic of sexual abuse, drugs, crime, illiteracy, and suicide in public education. 

But Republicans pointed out that the state’s child-welfare bureaucracy was in shambles. “That agency is a train wreck,” explained Senator Eric Berthel, a Republican from Watertown). “It’s off the rails. It needs to go through substantial reform and be fixed before they should be allowed to interact with another family and another child.”

“The bill subjects every homeschooling family to a background check just to exercise a basic parental right,” fumed Berthel, one of many Republican lawmakers who spoke out against what they described as government overreach and an assault on parental rights. “It creates a system where an allegation can carry the same weight as a conviction.” 

“In today’s economy, many families have multiple generations living in the same household,” he continued. “Under this bill, if anyone in that household is on a registry, the request is denied. That’s not targeted policy. That’s a blanket restriction that punishes entire families.”

Critics at the state and national level also slammed the measure. “They are taking something away from the homeschoolers that they have always had in Connecticut,” argued Family Institute of Connecticut Executive Director Peter Wolfgang, a homeschooling father of seven. “We have always had strong freedom to homeschool here.”

He also blasted the state’s effort to scapegoat home-educating families for failures of DCF, noting that the children who died were already known to the agency. “They were DCF’s responsibility, and DCF dropped the ball,” he said. “So what does our state government do? The opposite of what makes sense.”

He also blasted the state’s assumption that children were safer in a government school than with their own families. “What this law says is that the state government believes that children are safer in a public school … than they are with their own family,” he said. “It’s substituting the government for the family, and it’s saying that children belong to the state instead of to their own family.”

Ultimately, politicians “want to put all homeschoolers under the thumb now of DCF, the same group that failed to protect these children that were already their responsibility,” Wolfgang continued. Indeed, he noted that lawmakers and supporters of the bill consistently referred to the children as “’our kids’, as if the kids belong to the state.” 

The Home School Legal Defense Association, which rallied families in the state and beyond, vowed to continue the fight against Connecticut’s new restrictions. Attorney Kevin Boden, HSLDA director of legal and legislative advocacy, sent an email to families warning about the significance of the danger—and noting that this assault could spread. 

“This profound shift transforms Connecticut from a state where parents had significant freedom to the only state that imposes mandatory background checks on fit parents before they can teach their own children in their own home,” he said. “By requiring every parent to be pre-screened before they can begin homeschooling, it ceases to acknowledge parents as trusted actors and instead casts them as risks to be managed.”

“For homeschooling families, the signing of H.B. 5468 marks the first regression of homeschool freedom in the modern homeschool movement,” continued Boden. “While we are more than disappointed by this legislation, the battle is not over. We have been working hand-in-hand with our allies in Connecticut to oppose this bill since it was introduced and will continue to pursue appropriate legal action now that it has been signed into law.”

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Taiwan looks to Israel as it prepares society, economy and home front for China threat

Taiwan looks to Israel as it prepares society, economy and home front for China threat

Ofra Pasder, Taipei

Taiwan, the democratic island of about 23 million people, is an isolated technological powerhouse living under the shadow of its giant neighbor. China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and openly declares its intention to bring it under Beijing’s control, by force if necessary. In Taipei, officials understand that time may be running out, and the island has shifted into a mode of preparation: civilian, military and economic.

That complex diplomatic reality is felt daily inside Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry. Deputy foreign ministers Chen Ming-chi and François Chih-chung Wu describe a troubling picture of quiet warfare, one aimed at isolating Taiwan and weakening it from within.

“Beijing uses every possible tool to isolate Taiwan. We are their number one target,” Chen said. “In the past year alone, we identified 45,000 official Chinese accounts that spread some three million false posts against Taiwan.”

According to the officials, the campaign is not being waged only from afar. China, they said, exploits Taiwan’s internal political divisions to recruit messengers inside the island. “They have proxies, companies and private individuals who receive funding from Beijing and spread narratives such as, ‘Our democracy is flawed,’ ‘We cannot win,’ or ‘It is better to surrender,’” they said.

One reason the world is so closely watching the confrontation is Taiwan’s role in the most sensitive industry of the 21st century. The island produces about 80% of the world’s semiconductor industry, making any crisis in the Taiwan Strait a global economic and strategic emergency.

The lessons of the war in Ukraine have resonated strongly in Taipei. Ukraine showed that inexpensive drones and unmanned naval vessels can play a decisive role in slowing or stopping an invasion by a much larger army. Taiwan is studying that model closely.

In the city of Taichung, Thunder Tiger, once known for manufacturing toy cars and boats, has transformed itself into a producer of unmanned systems for military use. One of the company’s key developments is a drone guided by a fiber-optic cable. “Since it is physically connected by a wire, it cannot be jammed electronically,” said Allan Chi of Thunder Tiger.

The struggle is also being fought on the civilian front. Taiwan’s national resilience effort is led in part by Kuma Academy, a civil defense organization that has already trained more than 100,000 citizens for a possible invasion scenario.

“About 90% of Taiwan’s population does not serve actively in the military,” said Kuma Academy CEO Fuming Chu. “Our role is to prepare them for emergencies without making them paranoid. We teach first aid, rescue, logistics and, critically, how to identify disinformation.”

Graduates of the academy are meant to form part of the backbone of Taiwan’s home front. In a crisis, they are expected to help prevent social collapse, maintain routine and counter the panic that China seeks to generate through psychological warfare. In Taiwan, where the law prohibits carrying personal firearms, civilian resilience has become a central weapon against Chinese propaganda.

Throughout the visit to the island, held at the invitation of Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry, Israel came up repeatedly as a point of deep identification and a source of operational lessons. Taiwanese officials and analysts see Israel as another small democracy surrounded by threats.

“The military and diplomatic support you receive from the United States and the Western world is far beyond what Taiwan receives,” said a representative of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the body responsible for economic relations with China. “Israel does excellent work in gathering intelligence and fighting the infiltration of spies. That is something we must improve. But beyond that, we see the determination of your people. We need to learn from you how to put disagreements aside.”

Taipei’s daily routine still projects business as usual. Streets remain crowded, nightlife continues and markets draw large numbers of visitors. But beneath that surface, a vast engine of preparation is running.

Taiwan is not seeking confrontation, but it is no longer willing to see itself as a victim. Faced with Beijing’s growing pressure, the island understands that the future of democracy in East Asia may depend on its willingness and its ability to defend itself.

Trojan Horses Coming

Under The Guise Of Progressive Inclusivity, California Accepts In Another Trojan Horse

John Rodrigues 

On May 26, 2026, the California State Assembly overwhelmingly passed Assembly Bill 2017 (AB 2017) by a 64–1 vote. The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), is now heading to the State Senate, positioning California to legally institutionalize theological framework under the guise of progressive inclusivity. What that theological framework is, is alarming.

AB 2017 seeks to officially designate the two major Islamic holidays—Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha—as state-recognized holidays. If passed, public K-12 schools would be legally mandated to grant student absences for these days as “justifiable personal absences,” ensuring zero academic or truancy penalties. The bill also opens the door for local school boards and community colleges to shut down campuses entirely. Additionally, it extends workplace protections to state employees, granting them the explicit right to use accrued vacation or personal leave to observe these holidays without professional or financial repercussions.

For the progressive lawmakers backing the bill, the payoff is clear: it secures political capital, virtue-signals adherence to the tenets of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and appeases well-funded religious advocacy groups. But beneath the surface lies a calculated subversion of Western principles and a fundamental blindness to the spiritual warfare at play. Do not be misled, this is not being done out of the goodness of anyone’s heart.

By elevating specific religious holidays into state law, this flirts with violating the Establishment Clause by showing blatant favoritism and opens Pandora’s box to competing demands from countless other religious sects (and in CA that could become interesting) seeking the same state-sanctioned privileges.

Additionally, the passage of Assembly Bill 2017 exposes a profound contradiction by granting explicit, state-mandated protections to one faith while at the same time scrubbing traditional Western religious expressions —Judeo Christian—from the culture, as if they never existed; doing so, under the guise of the separation of church and state. If you live in California, this is what we’ve come to expect. 

While Christian and Jewish symbols have been aggressively privatized—such as public schools stripping Christmas and Easter of their names in favor of “Winter” and “Spring” breaks—this legislation weaponizes state statute to rewrite school and workplace calendars with a non-Western faith, creating a blatant double standard. From a biblical perspective, this attempt to equalize fundamentally conflicting truth claims within the civic fabric is a dangerous form of syncretism that defies the warning of 2 Corinthians 6:15-16, where we are challenged, “Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” 

By framing a theological observance through the lens of a “marginalized identity,” these advocates effectively disarm liberal opposition. Progressive lawmakers—who usually advocate fierce separation of church and state—are being manipulated into institutionalizing religious holidays into secular law. The vocabulary of social justice is being weaponized to codify religious privilege, creating a bizarre double standard where the secular left willingly accommodates a deeply conservative theological framework it would fight tooth and nail if it bore a Christian or Jewish label. 

Besides everything already stated, AB 2017 carries profound theological implications for the discerning believer. Scripture repeatedly warns that the true battlefield is not found in legislative chambers, but in the spiritual realm (Eph 6:12), and we keep forgetting this. By codifying holidays dedicated to an ideology that explicitly denies the deity, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, secular authorities are blindly inviting spiritual deception into the foundational institutions of our society. In 2 Corinthians 6:14, the mandate is clear: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?”

By systematically integrating non-Christian religious frameworks into state law, lawmakers are legally forcing public institutions—and by extension, the citizenry—into a spiritual partnership with a system completely incompatible with biblical truth. This is not benign multiculturalism; it is a total lack of spiritual discernment; and it is stage setting. The culture is succumbing to a spirit of delusion, exchanging absolute truth for a counterfeit gospel of humanistic tolerance (2 Tim 4:3). This will not adversely affect only Christians, but all. So much more could be said…

We do not have to guess where this trajectory is aimed – ultimately, we look to the Word and see the world succumbing to a one world religion, the Antichrist, etc. Secondly, we only have to look across the Atlantic to see the immediate effects, Western Europe -specifically the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, stands as catastrophic proof that making legal concessions under the banner of multiculturalism never ends there. It is a progressive myth that these accommodations lead to harmonious integration.

Instead, history shows that what begins as a simple holiday accommodation inevitably serves as a foothold for what we are witnessing each day. In Europe, these initial concessions escalated into demands for parallel legal systems, such as Sharia arbitration councils, which directly fractures the host nation’s sovereign laws. The end result is not a cohesive, inclusive melting pot, but rather the takeover of a nation by the steady erasure of Western foundational values that built them.

California’s AB 2017 is not an innocent gesture of goodwill. It is a dangerous step toward allowing an aggressive theological framework to permanently overwrite the dominant Western culture that made us, as Americans, what we are. If the State Senate fails to halt this bill, California will find out the hard way that when you invite the Trojan Horse of religious law into secular institutions, the host culture is always the one that gets erased.

With support from Turkey and Egypt, Hamas seeks new ceasefire deal without surrendering weapons

With support from Turkey and Egypt, Hamas seeks new ceasefire deal without surrendering weapons

All Israel News Staff

Hamas is attempting to formulate a new ceasefire outline, with help from Turkey and Egypt, which is intended to revive mediation efforts between the terror group and Israel, Saudi news organization Asharq Al-Awsat reported. 

The talks have been suspended for months, with both sides accusing the other of ceasefire violations. The IDF has continued to target Hamas leaders, and has taken additional territory inside the Gaza Strip, beyond the 53% it was allowed to keep as a temporary security buffer in the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. 

Hamas, for its part, accuses Israel of a failure to withdraw its troops from Gaza, failing to respect the ceasefire through its repeated strikes, and of not allowing sufficient humanitarian aid into the Strip. 

Israel, meanwhile, points to several attempts by armed Palestinians to cross the Yellow Line into Israeli-controlled territory, along with Hamas’ refusal to disarm, as proof that the terror organization is failing to uphold its obligations under the agreement. 

The IDF's Office for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) denies claims of insufficient aid, saying the amount of food aid entering Gaza daily is more than enough to support the population. 

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is stable, supported by a continuous and consistent flow of aid.

Working alongside the CMCC, the UN, and authorized international partners, we ensure a steady supply of food, water, sanitation, and medical services. pic.twitter.com/dCriwjiibt

— COGAT (@cogatonline) June 2, 2026

The Asharq Al-Awsat report cited two “Hamas sources” who said the group is expected to send a delegation to Cairo this weekend to discuss preliminary proposals to resolve the existing disagreements, following discussions with Turkish officials in Ankara earlier this week. 

The Hamas sources did not indicate what the proposals entail, however, a statement released after the meeting with Turkish intelligence head Ibrahim Kalin, blamed Israel for failing to honor the Sharm al-Sheikh agreement, for escalating strikes in Gaza and for a “failure to complete the implementation of the first phase of the agreement.” 

Hamas has repeatedly insisted that Israel fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip at the conclusion of the first phase of a ceasefire agreement, while Israel maintains that any withdrawal is contingent on Hamas beginning to disarm. The terror organization has consistently rejected disarmament proposals that involve surrendering its weapons to an external party.

Hamas has also expressed sharp criticism of UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nikolay Mladenov, who has insisted that the deal agreed to by Hamas includes disarmament as part of the process of installing the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). 

A report in Asharq Al-Awsat earlier this year stated that “several prominent political and military leaders” from Hamas could leave the Gaza Strip as part of the transition to the second phase of the peace deal. However, in recent weeks, Israel has eliminated most of Hamas’ senior military leaders.

With Hamas increasingly appearing intent on remaining in Gaza, and even incorporating itself into the incoming Palestinian governance of the Strip, and its continued refusal to disarm, Israel has returned to the idea of resuming military operations to destroy the last elements of the terror organization.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to seize as much as 70% of the Gaza Strip in an apparent bid to pressure Hamas to return to the negotiating table.