A new wave of mass protests has erupted across Iran, sparked by deepening economic crisis, and escalating in some areas into a revolt against the ruling government. Human rights monitors say that hundreds of protesters and members of government security forces have been killed amid a sweeping crackdown—with fears mounting over mass arrests, death sentences, and destruction of critical infrastructure. An internet blackout remains in effect over most of Iran, but final death tolls are expected to rise.

The unrest has also prompted renewed threats of U.S. military intervention, with President Donald Trump threatening attacks on Iran and cancelling planned talks with Iranian officials. Iranian leaders meanwhile have warned they are prepared for war if the U.S. escalates, including by targeting U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Narges Bajoghli, an associate professor of anthropology and Middle East Studies at John’s Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Samira Mohyeddin, managing editor for On The Line Media, to break down what’s driving the protests, what we know under conditions of severe information blackout, and why Washington’s talk of intervention carries enormous risks for both Iranians and the broader region.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe.

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the situation in Venezuela with Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America, and Jack Murphy, a journalist and former Army Ranger.

Ron says anger and indignation over American aggression has “served to bring together the Venezuelan population,” with mass mobilization in support of the Bolivarian project, and no visible opposition effort to capitalize on the attack. There’s “no fracture” within the governing base, he tells Drop Site, as Caracas gradually returns to daily life.

Murphy lays out in detail how the operation to kidnap Maduro unfolded, citing months of preparation, elite U.S. units, and critical local assets, including a CIA source very close to Maduro.

Murphy’s reporting can be read here on The High Side: https://thehighside.substack.com/p/bold-delta-force-raid-leads-to-capture

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A major new report by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab that reviewed and analyzed satellite imagery has found that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “engaged in widespread and systematic mass killing in El-Fasher, North Darfur upon gaining total control of the city and surrounding area on 26 October 2025.” The report found that the RSF “engaged in a systematic multi-week campaign to destroy evidence of its mass killings through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale. This pattern of body disposal and destruction is ongoing.”

Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, joins Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss the findings of the report, the critical role of the United Arab Emirates in funding and arming the RSF, and why he thinks the worst violence is yet to come.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill joins the livestream to talk about his exclusive interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, what disarmament of the Palestinian resistance really means, the state of negotiations around phase 2 of the so-called “ceasefire,” and more.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe.

The foreign policy of the Trump administration has followed a similar pattern to past administrations, both Republican and Democrat, despite campaigning as a “peace president.” Past presidents have been influenced by the neoconservative foreign policy establishment that has reigned since the end of the Cold War—and Trump has been no different.

Trump has attacked Yemen and Iran, supported Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, and is now targeting Latin America and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration is offering more of what the world is used to from the U.S.—endless wars waged for the benefit of a small elite and largely at the expense of ordinary people.

After supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trump is currently pushing forward a plan to transform the Gaza Strip into a protectorate run by Israel and the Gulf Arab states that would potentially eliminate the future sovereignty of the Palestinian people, and is likely to be rejected by Palestinians themselves.

This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Erik Sperling, the executive director of the advocacy group Just Foreign Policy. Hussain and Sperling discuss Trump’s foreign policy maneuvers, including the Gaza plan, Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan boats, and more.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The genocide in Gaza has slowed with the so-called ceasefire but it has not stopped. The Israeli attacks, airstrikes, shelling, shootings continue. More Palestinians are killed in Gaza nearly every day. The demolition and destruction of Gaza continues. The heavy Israeli restrictions on food, fuel, medicine, reconstruction materials entering Gaza continues. The famine continues. The exchange of captives according to the so-called first phase of the deal is nearly over and there is no real substantive agreement on what comes next.

As all eyes have been on Gaza, there has been a massive escalation of violence and attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli troops are conducting raids on villages and towns on a daily basis, displacing families, conducting mass arrests and shooting and killing Palestinians. Meanwhile, settlers operate with complete impunity and in collaboration with the Israeli military. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Jerusalem since October 2023, including over 200 children. Of those 200 children who have been killed, 42 have been killed since the beginning of this year alone. So the violence is only accelerating.

October, which marked the start of the olive harvest in Palestine, marked the highest monthly number of recorded Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians by UN OCHA since the agency began documenting such incidents in 2006. OCHA recorded more than 260 attacks in October resulting in casualties, property damage or both—an average of eight incidents per day. Meanwhile, one in every five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces so far in 2025 across the West Bank and Jerusalem is a child.

In the month of October alone, 442 Palestinians were arrested in the West Bank, including 33 children. Today, Israel is undergoing a periodic review by the UN Committee against Torture in Geneva and is facing numerous allegations of torture, abuse, starvation, isolation, medical neglect, and more against Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, joins Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain to talk about the accelerating surge of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem; the torture and abuse of Palestinians captives in Israeli prisons and detention centers; and the lack of accountability for the genocide in Gaza.

Murtaza also discusses “The Epstein Files”— his exclusive investigative series with Ryan Grim on Jeffrey Epstein’s role in Israeli intelligence operations through his relationship with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe.

Nearly two weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, not a day has gone by without Israel violating the agreement.

It has killed Palestinians in shootings, shelling and airstrikes on a routine basis. Last week, in one of the deadliest attacks, Israel killed 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family—including seven children—when it fired a tank shell on their vehicle on October 17 in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City as they were trying to return to their home to check on it. That attack did not make international headlines. Two days later, Israel unleashed a wave of airstrikes on Gaza after two of Israeli soldiers were killed in Rafah in what the Israeli military claimed was an attack by Palestinian fighters, although it appears their vehicle drove over an unexploded IED. Israel’s response was to bomb cafes, tents, school and homes across Gaza killing dozens of Palestinians.

In total, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed in direct Israeli attacks since the start of the ceasefire, according to the health ministry, and over 300 wounded. The official recorded death toll has gone up much more than that because nearly 450 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble. As the world focusses its attention on the bodies of the dead Israel captives, not nearly as much attention or focus is put on the estimated 10,000 Palestinians who are missing and buried under the rubble across Gaza as Israel is restricting the equipment and resources needed to begin the difficult task of retrieving them.

Israel is also violating the ceasefire by not allowing in the minimum amount of aid Gaza needs—600 trucks a day— as outlined in the agreement, and the famine in Gaza is still ongoing.

Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee in Deir al-Balah, joins Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss the latest on the ground.

Ryan also discusses the latest in Maine’s Democratic primary, where a new poll shows Senate candidate Graham Platner leading Gov. Janet Mills 58-24. Platner, a former Marine, has faced a torrent of criticism over re-surfaced Reddit posts and a covered-up tattoo from his military days depicting a Nazi skull.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe.

The tech industry has undergone a political shift in recent years, pivoting towards greater support for, and acquiescing to, authoritarian governments and movements around the world.

One key example has been Israel and Palestine, and how tech platforms are supporting the Israeli state.

In previous years, technology platforms offered greater freedom and attention to Palestinian narratives that had been ignored or suppressed by other media.

But today, technology and social media platforms are censoring and suppressing pro-Palestinian speech. And, most notably, the technology companies are cozying up to the Israeli government and defense sector, forging close links, even as the genocide in Gaza continues.

As Drop Site News reported last year in a special multi-part podcast called “The Palestine Laboratory,” much of this tech is actively used in Israel’s military onslaught on Palestinians.

This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Omar Zahzah, an assistant professor at San Francisco State University. Zahzah is also the author of: “Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle.”

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was made in part with support from The Intercept.

Despite the declaration of a Gaza “ceasefire,” Israel has continued to conduct military strikes and refused to allow the agreed-upon number of trucks carrying food, medicine, and other life essentials to the enclave. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, announced Wednesday that it had handed over the remains of all of the deceased Israeli captives it could reach without heavier equipment and international assistance. While Israel understood that it would take time to recover all of these bodies because many are buried under the rubble from its two years of sustained bombing of Gaza, it has falsely accused Hamas of violating the terms of the agreement.

Meanwhile, Palestinian captives freed from Israeli prisons have returned to Gaza and the occupied West Bank describing horrific conditions and torture they endured. Health authorities in Gaza also said that the bodies of deceased Palestinians returned to Gaza show signs of torture and abuse with some bodies still having arms or legs cuffed.

While Israel’s massive bombing of Gaza has largely ended and aid is beginning to enter the Strip, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are increasingly focused on demands that Gaza be disarmed and demilitarized, terms that Hamas negotiators did not formally agree to as part of the ceasefire deal. This issue will be at the center of the next phase of Gaza talks, which Hamas has said must include the participation of all Palestinian factions and parties.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill speaks with Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada about the state of the “ceasefire.” They also discuss the actions of local law enforcement and resistance fighters in Gaza aimed, they say, at restoring order, punishing collaborators and war profiteers.

Watch on YouTube or listen on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Drop Site News here.

Today, Drop Site presents an episode from our friends at Question Everything, a podcast from KCRW and Placement Theory.

The episode, titled “The Film the BBC Wouldn’t Air,” tells the inside story of how the BBC killed an important and timely documentary film into Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.

The British network faced relentless criticism for its decision to not air the film. Question Everything’s producer Sophie Kazis tells the story. The episode features Ramita Navai, an award-winning British-Iranian investigative journalist and Ben de Pear, an award-winning British journalist.

You can watch the film the BBC wouldn’t air, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,” on Zeteo.com.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today marks two years of genocide in Gaza. Two years of the most violent episode in the modern history of Palestine.

Israel has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children. That number is a bare minimum. Thousands more are missing under the rubble. There have been countless massacres. Flour massacres, aid massacres, Red Crescent massacres. School massacres. The massacres of over a thousand families and bloodlines that have been wiped out forever.

We do not even know the number of deaths not caused by bombs or bullets or shells or drones—the number of preventable deaths caused by Israel’s assault. We do know that at least 460 Palestinians, including 154 children have starved to death and more are dying every day from Israel’s campaign of forced starvation and famine.

Entire cities have been reduced to dust and broken concrete. Homes, hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries—everything that knits a community and society together has been destroyed. Even color seems to have been obliterated. Everything now covered now in gray dust.

92% of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Over 500 schools and every university has been damaged or destroyed. Only 1.5% of cropland is still accessible and suitable for cultivation.

Nearly every Palestinian in Gaza —95% of the population—has been displaced, most of them multiple times. Hundreds of thousands now live in tent cities where they are still bombed and shelled and shot.

Health care has been devastated. Out of 38 hospitals in Gaza, 25 are completely shut down while the rest are barely functioning. The number of doctors and medical personal killed is over 1,700. Over 360 have been detained.

Journalists have been slaughtered. Israel has killed between 250 and 270 journalists and media workers over the past two years. An unprecedented number. There is so much that is unprecedented.

Israel’s massive colonial violence is by no means confined just to Gaza. Over the past two years, we’ve seen a huge escalation in daily attacks and dispossession in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been driven from their homes in the largest wave of displacement in the West Bank since 1967. The number of Palestinians arrested in the West Bank and Jerusalem over the past two years has topped 20,000, including over 1,600 children. At least 77 political prisoners have died in custody.

And it is not just Palestine. Israel has bombed Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Qatar.

All of this has been backed and supported and armed by the United States more than any other country. A new report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that the U.S. has provided Israel with at least 21 billion dollars in military aid over the past two years alone. It concludes with the obvious: Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East without massive US backing.

On today’s Drop Site livestream, Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Noura Erakat joins Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous to discuss all of this and more. Erakat addressed the UN Security Council on Monday—only the second Palestinian woman to brief the Security Council since October 7, 2023 and the first to present the legal case that Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Drop Site at https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe.