The United States is expected to complete preparations across the region in the coming days for a possible attack against Iran, according to Channel 12 in Israel.

According to an exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal, Washington is considering a complete withdrawal of the roughly 1,000 American Servicemembers who remain in Syria, as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has moved to wrest control of the northeastern part of the country from the American-backed Kurdish-led paramilitary group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), seeking to fully unify Syria under the new government in Damascus.

Several Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.4s with the No. 12 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force, based out of RAF Coningsby and operated jointly with ground and maintenance crewmembers from the Qatar Emiri Air Force, have been deployed to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar from RAF Akrotiri, amid escalating tensions with Iran. According to the U.K. Ministry of Defense, the deployment was at the request of the Qatari Government under the U.K.-Qatar Defence Assurance Agreement.

Newly released footage, alleged to be from the night of January 8-9, which is claimed to show a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) firing an automatic rifle at anti-regime protesters from the back of a pickup truck in the capital of Tehran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting earlier this afternoon with President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at the Kremlin in Moscow, prior to tomorrow’s trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, which will be led by Witkoff and Kushner.

President Donald J. Trump stated earlier in a post on Truth Social:

“Maybe we should have put NATO to the test: Invoked Article 5, and forced NATO to come here and protect our Southern Border from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants, thus freeing up large numbers of Border Patrol Agents for other tasks.”

President Donald J. Trump announces that Canada and Prime Minister Mark Carney are no longer invited to his “Board of Peace” following Carney’s dominating speech this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Speaking to reporters earlier today onboard Air Force One while on the way back from the 56th Annual Summit of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, President Donald J. Trump spoke about Iran and the ongoing buildup of military assets in the Middle East:

“We’re watching Iran. We’re watching Iran. We have a lot of ships going that direction just in case. We have a big flotilla going in that direction. And we'll see what happens. We have a big force going towards Iran. I'd rather not see anything happen, but we're watching them very closely. I stopped 837 hangings on Thursday. They would have been dead, every one of them would have been hung. This is like from a thousand years ago. This is an ancient culture. Very smart people, by the way. It's an ancient culture. 837 mostly young men were going to be hung on Thursday, and I said: ‘You hang those people, you're going to be hit harder than you've ever been hit. It'll make what we did to your Iran nuclear look like peanuts.’ And an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place, they canceled it. And they actually said they canceled it. They didn't postpone it. They canceled it. So that was a good sign. But we have an armada - we have a massive - we have a massive fleet heading in that direction. Maybe we won't have to use it. We'll see.”

Senior officials in the Israeli Government are concerned that President Donald J. Trump will launch an initial strike campaign against targets in Iran, before losing interest, leaving Israel to deal with the aftermath alone, defense sources tell the Hebrew-language online newspaper Maariv Online.

Multiple large fires are currently burning at the PenzaNefteProdukt Oil Depot in the Penza Oblast of Western Russia, over 325 miles to the southeast of Moscow, following a long-range drone attack tonight by Ukraine.

Iran has now been under a total nationwide internet blackout for over two week, 350 hours without cell service, data, web access, or nearly any other communication to the outside world, besides occasional messages and videos sent via Starlink.

Horrific footage captured by a security camera in the Iranian capital of Tehran, which shows members of the Basij Force, a paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), along with other plainclothes operatives, brutally attacking a woman with knives and batons during the recent crackdown on anti-regime protests in Iran.

New footage published by the French Navy from yesterday’s interception, boarding, and seizure of the stateless sanctioned crude oil tanker, M/T GRINCH - part of Russia’s Shadow Fleet - in the Western Mediterranean near the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco.

New construction maps have been released of the reclamation work underway at the previous site of North Field on Tinian Island in the Northern Mariana Islands, roughly 100 miles to the northeast of Guam in the Northern Pacific. Under the current construction plan, Tinian Air Base will become one of the largest modern airfields for the U.S. Air Force and Navy, featuring over 250 spots for aircraft; bombers, fighters, and other support aircraft, with the base set to become a major launching point in a future conflict with China.

Former Canadian Olympic snowboarder and the largest cocaine distributor in Canada, Ryan Wedding, on the list of FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives for allegedly running a criminal enterprise stretching across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Colombia, was captured overnight Thursday in a joint operation by the FBI and Mexican Government in Mexico. According to FBI Director Kash Patel, Wedding is on the way to the United States to face charges of running a continuing criminal enterprise, committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes, after being indicted by a Federal Court in California.

The Dutch flagship airline KLM has announced that it will be suspending all flights to and from the Middle East until further notice, citing the “geopolitical situation” in the region and following discussions with officials in The Hague. KLM has directed international flights to avoid the airspace over Iraq, Iran, Israel, and several Gulf Nations, while all flights have been canceled to Tel Aviv, Dubai, Dammam, and Riyadh.