🚨 CONFIRMED: Footage reviewed and geolocated by Bellingcat confirms US tomahawk missiles hit the girls’ primary school in southern Iran that killed 180 people, most of them children.

Researcher Trevor Ball notes Israel does not possess Tomahawk missiles. United States does.

https://twitter.com/easybakeovensz/status/2030700313267540435

x.com/ryangrim/statu… x.com/ryangrim/statu…

🚨 BREAKING: Iran Launches Strikes on U.S. Bases Across the Middle East

▪️Explosions seen at the U.S. Naval Base in Al-Juffair, Bahrain, confirmed by Bahrain.

▪️Alarm sirens followed by up to four explosions in Kuwait.

▪️Massive explosions reported in Abu Dhabi.

▪️In Qatar, an official source at the Ministry of Defense told Al Jazeera that an Iranian missile was intercepted by the Patriot air defense system.

Iran had warned that any U.S. attack would be met with attacks on American bases and interests across the region, with a goal of killing a minimum of 500 American soldiers. More images from Bahrain where the Bahrain News Agency confirms that the service center of the US Fifth Fleet was targeted by a missile attack.

⭕️ LEAKED Email: Kat Abughazeleh “firmly an interventionist,” foreign policy adviser says

Kat Abughazaleh, a socialist Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 9th District and one of the only Palestinian-Americans seeking office in 2026, was described by her national security adviser as “firmly an interventionist” who “won’t stop until Russia is made to pay for its crimes,” in written responses detailing her foreign policy vision, obtained by Drop Site.

Ben Mermel wrote in an email to a Washington-based progressive foreign policy activist that Abughazaleh believes “the world is better off when America takes a leading role” and that the U.S. has “an obligation to support pro-democracy movements around the world, from Iran to Venezuela.” He added that “Kat wholly supports the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as its affiliated organizations (NDI, IRI, and the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center),” and said Congress should expand tools “from sanctions to NGO support” to advance those efforts without always resorting to “kinetic force.”

The DC-based activist had written to Mermel saying he had noticed unusually hawkish language on the campaign website related to Ukraine and Taiwan and was looking for clarification.

In his response, Mermel said that on Taiwan she would amend the Taiwan Relations Act by “dropping our strategic ambiguity” and make clear the U.S. would counter Chinese aggression “with force,” arguing the region now requires “a firmer hand.”

On Ukraine, Mermel wrote she would “hold the line,” support “funding the Ukrainian war effort to the hilt,” back long-range strikes on Russian strategic targets, deploy additional U.S. “air, naval, and ground assets” to NATO’s front line, and that “She supports the seizure and redistribution of Russian assets in Europe and the United States, for the purpose of financing the war effort.”

Abughazaleh did not respond to a request for comment, but a source close to the campaign told Drop Site that the adviser’s email did not accurately represent her views, saying, “Kat is committed to taking on authoritarianism but is vehemently against the military industrial complex and the continuation of failed US intervention approaches.” Abughazaleh has consistently argued against U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and, at a recent forum, said she opposes U.S. strikes on Iran.

Mermel in 2024 attended a pro-Israel protest held to counter the encampment at George Washington University. He has been Abughazaleh’s National Security Adviser since July 2025, according to Legistorm. The full exchange is posted below. Watch the report on Breaking Points: Here is the full email exchange that has been circulating among foreign policy activist circles. Drop Site confirmed its authenticity: 🧵

"On Wed, Jan 21, 2026 at 10:24 PM XXXX wrote:

Hi Ben, Great to hear from you -- I appreciate the prompt response. It's great to hear that a primary campaign has an NSA on board and is taking the issues seriously already. If you don't mind, I'm going to fire off a series of questions: 1. On your personal background: How did you come into this position, and what led you to choose this work? I see on Legistorm that you're from the Northeast and went to school here in DC (and have probably actually lived here longer than I have in total). What drew you to Kat's campaign and Illinois politics? 2. What has your role in the nascent primary fight been like, and what role do you see foreign policy playing in the race? The AIPAC and Israeli genocide points are obvious ones, and I've seen some of the recent reporting on Biss (as I alluded to). Are there any other major issues or demographic blocs in the district that are affecting the race? Schakowsky's office has a long history of good work opposing U.S. support for bad governments in Central America, though I've never been sure if that stemmed from the district's makeup or from the personal interests of the Congresswoman or her team. 3. Are there any members of Congress -- especially in the House -- that you and the campaign look to for inspiration or as a model for your foreign policy approach? As for the platform: 4. This line in particular stands out to me: "As with regard to Taiwan, the United States must continue to support Taiwan in the face of increasing Chinese aggression and attempts to undermine Taiwan’s internationally recognized status as a state of its own." The U.S. does not officially recognize Taiwan as a state of its own -- only a dozen or so small countries do -- and this a longstanding policy ("One China") meant to prevent U.S.-China and cross-Strait conflict. Independence is also a hotly debated topic in Taiwan, and the DPP's position does not represent a Taiwanese monolith. Previous moves by U.S. officials toward treating Taiwan as an independent country, outside the Taiwan Relations Act, drove U.S.-China relations to their lowest point in recent memory. Is the campaign's position that the U.S. should change this policy status quo and support Taiwan's independence? 5. The first paragraph of the entire foreign policy page argues "we must support democratic movements worldwide while still avoiding unnecessary military intervention." While I agree that supporting democracy movements is an admirable goal, has the U.S.'s tremendous and unwavering support for the genocide in Gaza not severely undermined its credibility to do this? What would this "support" entail in Congress -- would it include the kinds of National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored groups long favored by interventionists in the State Department, or sanctions on repressive countries?..."

⚡️NEW at @DropSiteNews: Palantir's AI Is Already Playing a Major Role in Tracking Gaza Aid Deliveries

As Israel bans NGOs, the U.S. is handing aid delivery in Gaza to private companies pursuing their own agendas.

By Jonathan Whittall (@_jwhittall)

dropsitenews.com/p/palantir-ai-… Palantir Technologies has a permanent desk at the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) headquarters in southern Israel, three sources from the diplomatic community inside the CMCC told Drop Site News.

According to the sources, the artificial intelligence data analytics giant is providing the technological architecture for tracking the delivery and distribution of aid to Gaza.

🚨France, Germany, Italy, and the United States have escalated attacks on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, demanding her resignation over remarks she did not make.

Here’s everything you need to know:

1. U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz and the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accused Albanese of calling Israel the “common enemy of humanity.”

2. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot went further, branding her a “political activist who stirs up hate,” accusing her of comparing Israel to the Third Reich, and announcing France will formally demand her removal at the UN Human Rights Council session on February 23, 2026. He insisted she must resign immediately.

🔴3. But Albanese never called Israel the “common enemy of humanity.” She described the system enabling genocide in Palestine as humanity’s common enemy. The quote has been widely misrepresented.

4. French officials also criticized her for appearing at the Doha Forum alongside a Hamas leader and Iran’s foreign minister. In fact, she was not on stage with those figures. Paris has long accused her of “justifying” the October 7 attacks for contextualizing them within decades of occupation, a characterization President Emmanuel Macron previously called a “disgrace.”

5. The Trump administration has previously demanded her removal and imposed sanctions on her for documenting Israel’s crimes.

6. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul echoed the push, writing: “I respect the UN system based on independent rapporteurs. However, Albanese has made numerous inappropriate statements in the past. I condemn her recent statements on Israel. Her position is untenable.”

7. Italy’s foreign minister also supported her removal, stating that Albanese’s positions “do not reflect those of the Italian government” and that her “behaviors, statements, and initiatives are not appropriate for the position she holds within a body of peace and guarantee such as the United Nations.”

8. Supporters, including various scholars, say the campaign is political retaliation for her reports on Israeli human rights violations.

9. Amnesty International France called Paris’s move a “shameful misrepresentation,” stating: “No, Francesca Albanese did not designate Israel as the common enemy of humanity… We denounce this attack on the independence of her mandate.” The group added it was “shocking” that France’s foreign minister repeated false claims while publicly prioritizing the fight against disinformation.

10. In an interview with L’Humanité, Albanese responded to @jnbarrot: “Everyone makes mistakes, it’s human. But we correct, we rectify,” calling on him to apologize and retract his false comments.

11. The backlash has not come only from Western governments.. “We don’t agree with much of what she says. We wouldn’t use the language that she’s using in describing the situation,” the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.

The fight now centers on whether @FranceskAlbs, an independent UN Special Rapporteur can continue documenting Israeli crimes without political reprisal.

🎥 Video via L’Humanité. References in reply. Albanese’s full comments here:

https://twitter.com/franceskalbs/status/2020983308818186721

🧵 1/
Human Rights Watch shelved a report concluding that Israel’s decades-long denial of Palestinians’ right of return constitutes a “crime against humanity,” prompting the resignation of its entire Israel-Palestine team: Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir and assistant researcher Milena Ansari.

Drop Site News spoke directly with Shakir and reviewed internal HRW emails and other documents. The story: 🧵🔽 2/
The 43-page report had completed Human Rights Watch’s full internal review process over seven months, including sign-off from HRW’s legal team and divisions covering refugees, international justice, women’s rights, and children’s rights.

It was halted roughly two weeks before its scheduled publication on December 4.

⭕️ Only 12 of 50 Palestinians approved to return to Gaza were allowed through the Rafah crossing on Monday, as returnees described being transferred by the armed Abu Shabab militia to Israeli checkpoints and subjected to hours-long interrogations, threats, and confiscation of personal belongings.

Israel blocked 38 of the 50 Palestinians attempting to enter Gaza and sent them back to Egypt, various outlets report today. On the outbound side, just five patients were allowed to leave for medical treatment. Reuters reported that ten companions accompanied them, while Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the total number of people who exited was just eight. An Israeli security source confirmed to Haaretz that members of the Israel-backed Abu Shabab militia, operating as the so-called “Popular Forces” now under Ghassan Duhine, escorted civilians from Rafah and handed them over to Israeli authorities at a newly installed inspection point.

Palestinian National Initiative Secretary General Mustafa Barghouti said returnees faced “horrific inspection procedures.” One woman, Sabah al-Raqab, said Abu Shabab gunmen beat, humiliated, strip-searched, handcuffed, and threatened women with arrest and death. Of six buses waiting to enter Gaza, she said, only one was allowed through.

The 12 who entered, nine women and three children, told Arab media they were questioned at multiple locations along the crossing. Several said masked Abu Shabab gunmen handed them over for Israeli interrogation. One woman said Israeli officials seized all their belongings, “even the children’s toys,” and denied them food and water. Another said she was questioned for more than two hours and told: “We won’t let you in. We’ll take you as prisoners until you tell us who entered on October 7.”

Middle East Eye shared footage of a Palestinian woman who said Israeli forces blindfolded and restrained returnees. “They don’t want large numbers to return; they want large numbers to leave,” she said.
Read Mustafa Barghouti’s full comments below documenting the ordeal for the 12 Palestinian returnees:

https://twitter.com/MustafaBarghou1/status/2018647378664857882

⚡️🧵 NEW at Drop Site:

In February 2024, the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem suppressed an internal report meant for wider circulation among senior Biden administration officials, saying it “lacked balance.” Reuters recently reported that the internal cable included photos from northern Gaza warning the area had become an “apocalyptic wasteland,” but U.S. ambassador to Israel Jack Lew and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked the images from distribution.

Jonathan Whittall @_jwhittall, who was on the UN fact-finding trip and is the former head of UN OCHA in the OPT, now shares a selection of those photos with Drop Site for the first time.

The images were taken during the January 2024 visit, which followed a three-month total siege on northern Gaza. Whittall says the mission’s purpose was to reflect reality, not political balance. “Many of these scenes had already been captured by Palestinian journalists, but they too had been dismissed as biased,” he writes. 🧵

📸 Photo 1: A partially destroyed school with piles of garbage and rubble lining the streets in Jabaliya. The school had no clean water or sanitation available and was being used as an emergency shelter by displaced Palestinians. January 31, 2024. (Photo by Jonathan Whittall.) 📸 Photo 2: The same partially destroyed school in Jabaliya. January 31, 2024.

🚨 Jared Kushner presented a “master plan” for redeveloping Gaza into a high-tech metropolis during a speech at the Board of Peace charter signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Watch his full remarks here. We break down some key points in the thread below: 🧵 1/ Senior White House adviser and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner said the administration has moved from securing a ceasefire to what he described as the far harder task of implementing peace, framing the effort as a shift in mindset after years of war in Israel and decades of despair in Gaza.

He credited President Donald Trump’s “first principles” approach for pushing the team to aim for outcomes others considered impossible, arguing that peace required changing behavior, habits, and expectations on both sides.

📌 Below is the full text of the charter of Trump’s proposed Board of Peace, reported and verified by the Times of Israel and other outlets. Drop Site News has also obtained a copy, which matches the document they published.

CHARTER OF THE BOARD OF PEACE

PREAMBLE

Declaring that durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed;

Recognizing that lasting peace takes root when people are empowered to take ownership and responsibility over their future;

Affirming that only sustained, results-oriented partnership, grounded in shared burdens and commitments, can secure peace in places where it has for too long proven elusive;

Lamenting that too many approaches to peace-building foster perpetual dependency, and institutionalize crisis rather than leading people beyond it;

Emphasizing the need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body; and

Resolving to assemble a coalition of willing States committed to practical cooperation and effective action,

Judgment guided and justice honored, the Parties hereby adopt the Charter for the Board of Peace. Article 1: Mission

CHAPTER I – PURPOSES AND FUNCTIONS

The Board of Peace is an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict. The Board of Peace shall undertake such peace-building functions in accordance with international law and as may be approved in accordance with this Charter, including the development and dissemination of best practices capable of being applied by all nations and communities seeking peace.

🇻🇪 How popular was Trump’s move to intervene militarily to depose Maduro among Venezuelans?

Two pre-intervention surveys suggested a sharp split between Venezuelans inside the country and those abroad, with deep opposition at home and high support in the diaspora.

1. Datanálisis poll, Dec 2025
(Caracas-based firm)

▪️ Foreign military intervention (inside Venezuela)
➤ 55% opposed
➤ 23% supported
➤ 22% unsure / other

▪️Political alignment of those polled
➤ 60% politically unaffiliated
➤ 13% support the government
➤ 19% support the opposition

Page 1/5.
Thread continues below ⬇️ 2. AtlasIntel Intel Poll, October 22-28, 2025, published by Bloomberg
(Brazil-based polling firm)

▪️ Support for U.S. military intervention
➤ 64% support among Venezuelans abroad
➤ 34% support among Venezuelans living in the country

🚨 BREAKING: New footage shows explosions around Caracas, Venezuela, as parts of the city’s south near a major military base lost electricity. Low-flying aircraft were seen and heard from across the capital, according to Reuters.

https://twitter.com/falasteen47/status/2007336555397222542

Agence France-Presse and Associated Press said the blasts were heard around 2 a.m. local time, with an AP reporter counting at least seven explosions over several neighborhoods. Residents rushed into the streets, some watching the sky as aircraft flew at low altitude. The site of the explosions remains unclear, and Venezuelan authorities have not issued an official explanation or confirmed any casualties.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2007335336331133260

🧵 THREAD: What Day 81 of the Gaza ceasefire shows, according to field data shared with Drop Site by sources inside Hamas

⭕️ A daily field monitoring report submitted to mediators by Hamas recorded 22 Israeli military violations of the Gaza ceasefire on Dec. 31, 2025 (Day 81), with two people killed — including a 5-year-old child — and multiple injuries reported across Gaza.

⭕️ The report cites 1152 injuries since the ceasefire began, with “all of the wounded were targeted inside the yellow line, without exception.”

⭕️ The thread below details casualties, military activity, aid entry, and overall compliance with agreed terms after 81 days 🧵👇🏼 1️⃣ Killings under the ceasefire

➤ 422 people killed since the agreement began
➤ 53.5% are children, women, or elderly
➤ 91.7% are civilians
➤ 96.4% were killed inside the “yellow line”, an area meant to be protected
➤ 2 people killed on Dec. 31 alone

NEW: Internal Hamas document shows Israel has violated Gaza ceasefire every day for 80 days

Despite President Trump’s claim yesterday that Israel was “100%” compliant with the ceasefire he brokered, a detailed internal report shared with Drop Site by sources within Hamas documents daily, systematic Israeli violations of the Gaza ceasefire.

1) What this document is
▪️ A day-80 violations report compiled through daily monitoring across Gaza
▪️ Tracks killings, injuries, military activity, aid access, and withdrawal compliance
▪️ Hamas says it has consistently transmitted this data to mediators overseeing the ceasefire 2) Killings since the ceasefire began
▪️ 420 Palestinians killed over 80 days
▪️ 53.3% were children, women, or elderly
▪️ 91.6% of those killed were civilians
▪️ 96.4% killed inside the designated “yellow line”

🟢 Hamas is publicly challenging Israel and its U.S. backers to allow an open, impartial international investigation into October 7—rejecting Israeli claims about civilian targeting, killing of children, and raping of women.

In a new political document, Hamas says that “during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, the resistance did not target any hospital, school, or house of worship; it did not kill a single journalist or any member of ambulance crews,” and adds: “We challenge the entity to prove otherwise.”

The movement calls for “an impartial international investigation into the claims of Israeli civilian deaths on October 7,” alongside a parallel probe into Israeli crimes committed during Israel’s war on Gaza.

The demand appears in a 42-page narrative released by Hamas today, laying out its account of October 7, Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, and its view of the current political moment and what comes next.
Here’s the full section:

After more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Al Araby TV hosted a rare on-air debate from the ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital, between Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem, Fatah spokesperson Munther Hayek, and veteran Palestinian writer and lawyer Mustafa Ibrahim. They discuss October 7, resistance, governance, unity, and the political “day after.”

In the opening exchange, host Islam Badr frames the central question facing Palestinians following two years of annihilation: who has the authority to decide war and peace. Hamas’ Qassem explains that Hamas has long sought a collective national decision through elections, reconciliation, and joint resistance structures, agreeing that decisions about how to confront Israel should be made through a unified Palestinian institution, not by any single faction.

@islambader_1988 | @AlarabyTV

Full discussion in thread below 🧵 Fatah spokesperson Munther Hayek pushes back, arguing that Fatah’s turn to negotiations was taken through the PLO’s national institutions, not unilaterally. He says Hamas, since the internal split, has made decisions of war on its own — pointing to the devastation surrounding them at Al-Shifa Hospital as the outcome.

Hayek stresses that while armed resistance is a legitimate right in principle, direct military confrontation with Israel has repeatedly produced catastrophic results, citing the Second Intifada, Arafat’s killing, and the construction of the apartheid wall. He calls for an “honest review” of strategy, warning that failing to account for the regional and international balance leaves Palestinians paying the highest price.

🇺🇳 UN Secretary General’s Office:
“Over the past 24 hours, and despite the ceasefire, the UN has continued to receive reports of air strikes, shelling and gunfire in all 5 governorates of the Gaza Strip.”

(December 22, 2025)

https://twitter.com/dropsitenews/status/2003245584841605589

➤ Ongoing attacks despite ceasefire:

The UN says attacks in the past 24 hours have resulted in casualties and disruptions to humanitarian operations. A rescue mission to reach an injured person in Gaza City was denied yesterday.

🇸🇩🧵We’re kicking off a detailed thread to help you catch up on the catastrophic violence and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Sudan. If you haven’t been following closely, this will give you the essential context.

➤ Up to 400,000 people have been killed since the civil war broke out in April 2023, including an estimated 60,000 in El Fasher in the Darfur region, in just three weeks after its fall in late October 2025. (Yale Humanitarian Research Lab)

➤ Right now, about 21 million people in Sudan face acute hunger, with roughly 375,000 at famine levels, with some 13 million people displaced. (IPC)

➤ The United States plays a key role. It has enormous leverage over the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is the chief external backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—one of the two main warring parties in Sudan.

➤ But experts and rights groups note the Trump administration is not using that leverage at all. In recent State Department briefings, Sec. Rubio and senior Africa officials have refused to even utter the name of the country. By not pressuring the UAE to halt its support, the U.S. is allowing the mass slaughter – “very likely genocide” according to HRW – to continue unabated.

Follow along as we break down the key aspects of the crisis and what’s driving the violence. 👇

——
🔴 Video Clip: Nicole Widdersheim of Human Rights Watch, her voice audibly breaking, describes atrocities against civilians in Sudan that are now “on par, if possibly not worse,” than those during the Darfur genocide two decades ago. (U.S. House Committee on December 11, 2025) 2/ Now let’s get into the strategic picture. The RSF, heavily backed by the UAE, has been making bloody advances. After seizing El Fasher in western Sudan in October, they’ve gained ground in the Kordofan region, seizing key areas like Babnusa and the Heglig oil fields. This puts them on a direct path to the city of El-Obeid—one of the last major SAF strongholds in central Sudan.

Human Rights Watch warned on Thursday that civilians in South Kordofan now face an “imminent risk of mass atrocities to the level and the volume that we saw in al-Fashir just two months ago.”

The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab warns that with the RSF’s advantage in weapons—particularly drones and jammers—they could reach the capital Khartoum again by the next wet season if nothing changes. Meanwhile, aid groups are warning of a new wave of civilian displacement as the RSF pushes east.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1996853206823874924

🧵1/ Israel and pro-Israel allies have repeatedly claimed Hamas carried out rapes, even “mass rapes,” on October 7, routinely pointing to a UN report by Pramila Patten as proof.

That narrative was openly challenged last month by Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (@UNSRVAW), who stated that “no independent investigation has found that rape took place on October 7.”

Her comments triggered a fierce political backlash. Senator @JohnFetterman publicly condemned her, as did a group of more than 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders, and former U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, who issued a letter demanding her removal from the UN.

Meanwhile, U.S. political leaders and others continue to cite Patten’s report as definitive, despite Patten herself admitting:

➤ “I did not not collect evidence.”

➤ “I did not conduct an investigation.”

➤ “I received information from sources.”

More on those “sources” and what her report actually does and does not establish in the thread below. 🧵👇

🚨Watch this video first: 2/ Pramila Patten’s March 2024 report stated there are “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations in Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on October 7, 2023.”

However, it’s important to understand what these UN findings actually mean.

🔗 un.org/sexualviolence…

🧵THREAD: Drop Site journalists @JeremyScahill and Jawa Ahmad warn that Trump’s Gaza plan contains a “Disarmament Trap.”

The U.S. and Israel – now backed by a stamp of approval from the UN and the widely unpopular Palestinian Authority – are attempting to use the new resolution to secure a surrender of the Palestinian cause and the right to resist occupation. It’s an outcome Israel has failed to achieve through two years of genocide, and across 77 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing.

While Palestinian resistance groups deny ever pledging disarmament to U.S. officials, Hamas and other factions have repeatedly said they are open to a long-term, internationally enforced truce and a form of monitored decommissioning — but not the surrender of the Palestinian people’s right to armed resistance or self-defense under occupation. (Continues below👇) 1/ At a Nov. 6 Miami business conference, Trump adviser Steve Witkoff told investors the U.S. is “in the middle of standing up a decommissioning process” for Gaza’s weapons – a “demilitarization and amnesty program.”

He claimed Hamas already committed to disarmament and told Jared Kushner and him that they would “give the weapons” to an international security force. Witkoff framed disarmament not as a demand, but as a settled fact.

🇸🇩 THREAD: Why Trump Won’t Confront the UAE Over Its Support for Sudan’s Genocidal RSF

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have spent the past month carrying out a genocidal massacre in al-Fasher, where satellite analysis suggests as many as 200,000 people are now unaccounted for. The RSF’s mass executions, village burnings, ethnic cleansing, and systematic starvation rank among some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.

Yet the United States, under Donald Trump, has shown no sign of pressuring RSF’s chief external backer: the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A recent report by Forbes details why - The UAE is Trump’s biggest foreign revenue source.

Trump’s current financial entanglements with the Emirates create powerful personal incentives for the President to look away as a genocide unfolds rather than pressure Abu Dhabi.

📸🎥 “A lot of cash. Unlimited cash.” — President Trump could hardly help himself from saying out loud as he stood next to UAE Vice-President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt on October 13. A New York Times investigation, citing U.S. intelligence, identified Sheikh Mansour as the senior Emirati official overseeing the UAE’s outreach to Sudan’s RSF — including communications with RSF commander Hemedti and the networks moving money, supplies, and political support to the militia. The Times also published a photo of Sheikh Mansour meeting with Hemedti, as he stands accused of mass killings, mass rapes, and ethnic cleansing across Darfur and beyond. 🧵⬇️
⭕️ *The UAE is Trump’s biggest foreign revenue source*

Since 2022, Trump businesses have entered at least nine UAE-linked deals. Five are Trump Organization licensing agreements that pay ongoing fees for the use of the Trump name on golf courses, hotels, and residential projects. Licensing contracts require no construction or ownership from Trump. They are pure cash streams. New filings estimate these UAE-connected deals will bring in about 500 million dollars in 2025 alone, with at least 50 million in recurring annual income. No other foreign country provides comparable revenue to the Trump family.