The enduring stain of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis

Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days after students and militants took over the US Embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution. (Getty Images)
Updated 08 November 2019
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The enduring stain of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis

  • Forty years ago on Nov. 4, a mob of Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran
  • The consequences of the 1979 events reverberate to this day across the Middle East

DUBAI: Forty years ago, a mob of Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran and took dozens of staff members hostage. On Monday, demonstrators chanting “Down with USA” and “Death to America” gathered in front of the same building as state TV aired videos of rallies in other Iranian cities.

Many of the ugly sentiments from 1979 remain today amid renewed tensions between the two countries, following the unraveling of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and the re-imposition of US sanctions on the Iranian economy.
“Thanks to God, today the revolution’s seedlings have evolved into a fruitful and huge tree. Its shadow has covered the entire Middle East,” said Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the commander of the Iranian army, in what was a clear allusion to the “crescent of power” that today stretches from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.
There is no denying that 40 years after the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s “shadow” covers large expanses of the Middle East. It has expanded since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. But to those living under Iran’s shadow, the “fruitful and huge tree” stands for a combination of religious fundamentalism, cross-border terrorism, domestic repression and foreign meddling.
Currently, Iraq and Lebanon are witnessing massive anti-government demonstrations. While those protests are fueled by local grievances and mainly directed at political elites, they pose a clear danger to Iran, which backs both governments and powerful militias in each country.
“Although many originally came out over issues of jobs, the cost of living and failing services, the protests evolved into an existential confrontation with the agents of Iran and their malign impact on society,” wrote political commentator Baria Alamuddin for Arab News.
If there is a specific date for the beginning of Iran’s “malign impact,” it is arguably Nov. 4, 1979.

The assault that day on the US Embassy in Tehran was the culmination of protests by supporters of the revolution, demanding the extradition of the shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was in the US receiving treatment for cancer.
According to an AP report from the time, “a mob of Iranian students overran US Marine guards in a three-hour struggle Sunday and invaded the American Embassy in Tehran, seizing dozens of staff members as hostages, Tehran Radio reported.” After seven days, the women and African-Americans were freed.
In April 1980, US President Jimmy Carter cut diplomatic ties with Iran, imposed more sanctions and ordered all Iranian diplomats to leave the US. The same month, a failed US mission to rescue the hostages resulted in several deaths, including eight US soldiers.
Finally, on Jan. 20, 1981, after secret negotiations that resulted in the signing of an agreement to free Iranian assets, the remaining 52 Americans were flown to Wiesbaden air base in Germany.
The hostage-taking marked the moment US-Iranian relations began deteriorating sharply.

Under the shah, relations were good as Iran was more or less Washington’s main strategic ally in the region, having a status equivalent to, if not higher than, Israel.
The release of the hostages signaled the end of a traumatic chapter in US diplomatic history, but for Arab countries of the Middle East, it marked the beginning of an era of terrorism, sectarianism and conflicts that continue to this day.
A demonstration on Monday outside the Iranian consulate in Iraq’s holy city of Karbala saw protestors spray-painting “Karbala is free, Iran out!” on walls. Posters of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been burnt — the protests have cost the lives of more than 250 people.
In Lebanon, a movement against corruption and the official confessional system has paralyzed the country for three weeks. Along with demands for a non-sectarian government, protesters have aimed anger at Tehran. “Iran wants to close its ears as it has caused poverty, militia dominance in other countries and government failure. The truth is that the accusations match reality,” wrote Arab News columnist Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed on Oct. 31.
In retrospect, the hostage crisis came as a major shock to the West. US intelligence had failed to anticipate it or the revolution. The consequences of that reverberate to this day across the Middle East. Attacking diplomatic posts remains an Iranian tactic. A mob stormed the UK Embassy in Tehran in 2011, while Saudi Arabian diplomatic posts were attacked in 2016.

FORTY YEARS OF ANIMOSITY

1979 - The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, forced to leave country on Jan. 16 after months of protests and strikes.

1979 - US diplomats and citizens taken hostage after Iranian students seize US Embassy on Nov. 4 in Tehran in violation of Vienna Convention, demanding return of the shah to stand trial.

1980 - US cuts diplomatic ties with Iran, seizes Iranian assets and restricts trade with the Islamic Republic. Failed US mission on April 24 to rescue the hostages results in several deaths.

1981 - On Jan. 20, 52 US hostages freed after spending 444 days in captivity as part of a “final complete agreement.”

1984 - Iran listed by the administration of US President Ronald Reagan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

1985-86 - Iran-Contra scandal sheds light on secret deal during Reagan’s presidency to ship weapons to Iran in exchange for help in freeing US hostages held by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

1988 - Mistaking an Airbus A300 for a fighter jet, warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air flight in the Gulf on July 3, killing all 290 on board.

2002 - Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, branded “axis of evil” by US President George W. Bush.

2002 - Iran accused by US of having a clandestine nuclear weapons program after opposition group reveals details of uranium enrichment facilities.

2012 - New law allows US President Barack Obama to sanction foreign banks if they fail to reduce their Iranian oil imports.

2013 - Obama speaks by phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in September. 2015 - Iran signs deal — called JCPOA — with world powers, including the US, to limit its nuclear activities and allow international inspectors.

2016 - US lifts nuclear-related sanctions on Iran.

2018 - US President Donald Trump abandons nuclear deal and reinstates sanctions against Iran and countries that trade with it.

2019 - In April, US designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Additional sanctions imposed in May.

2019 - Iran shoots down US military drone over Strait of Hormuz on June 20.

2019 - Iranian demonstrators mark 40th anniversary of hostage crisis with slogans of “Down with USA” and “Death to America” in front of the former US Embassy in Tehran.


'I thought I'd died.' How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

Updated 20 April 2025
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'I thought I'd died.' How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

  • Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8
  • Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard

IDLIB: Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.
The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.
“I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded,” Khalil told The Associated Press. “At first, I thought I’d died. I didn’t think I would survive this.”
Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.
“There were days I didn’t want to live anymore,” Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.
While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.
Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
‘It will take ages to clear them all’
Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.
“Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed,” said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.
Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.
“We don’t even have an exact number,” said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria’s defense ministry. “It will take ages to clear them all.”
Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat Al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.
“This one can take off a leg,” he said. “We have to detonate it manually.”
Psychological trauma and broader harm
Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. “Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers,” he said.
Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.
“We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job,” he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.
The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.
Syria’s military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.
‘Every day someone is dying’
Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. “My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going,” Salah said. “But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’”
Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.
He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated. After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.
For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.
In a nearby village, Jalal Al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.
He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, “but there’s nothing so far,” he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. “As you can see, I can’t walk.” The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.


Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

Updated 20 April 2025
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Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

  • President Donald Trump has been pushing for rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it
  • Talks even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries

ROME: Iran and the United States will begin having experts meet to discuss details of a possible deal over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, the top Iranian diplomat said Saturday after a second round of negotiations in Rome.
The comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who met with US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff for several hours, suggest movement in the talks. The experts will meet in Oman before Araghchi and Witkoff meet again in Oman on April 26, Araghchi said.
There was no immediate readout from the US side after the meeting at the Omani Embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighborhood. However, President Donald Trump has been pushing for a rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it.
“The talks were held in a constructive environment and I can say that is moving forward,” Araghchi told Iranian state television. “I hope that we will be in a better position after the technical talks.”
He added: “This time, we succeeded to reach a better understanding about a sort of principles and aims.”
Iranian officials described the talks as indirect, like those last weekend in Muscat, Oman, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi shuttling between them in different rooms.
That talks are even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the US Embassy hostage crisis. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, setting off years of attacks and negotiations that failed to restore the accord that drastically limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Talks come as tensions rise in the Mideast
At risk is a possible American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, or the Iranians following through on their threats to pursue an atomic weapon. Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have spiked over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and after US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens more.
“I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Friday. “I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Araghchi met Saturday morning with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani ahead of the talks with Witkoff.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, also met Tajani on Saturday. Grossi’s agency would likely be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached, as it did with the 2015 accord Iran reached with world powers.
Tajani said Italy was ready “to facilitate the continuation of the talks even for sessions at the technical level.”
A diplomat deal “is built patiently, day after day, with dialogue and mutual respect,” he said in a statement.
Araghchi, Witkoff both traveled ahead of talks
Both men have been traveling in recent days. Witkoff had been in Paris for talks about Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale war there grinds on. Araghchi paid a visit to Moscow, where he met with officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia, one of the world powers involved in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, could be a key participant in any future deal reached between Tehran and Washington. Analysts suggest Moscow could potentially take custody of Iran’s uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
Oman’s capital, Muscat, hosted the first round of negotiations between Araghchi and Witkoff last weekend, which saw the two men meet face to face after indirect talks. Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.
Ahead of the talks, however, Iran seized on comments by Witkoff first suggesting Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67 percent, then later saying that all enrichment must stop. Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote on X before the talks that Iran would not accept giving up its enrichment program like Libya, or agreeing to using uranium enriched abroad for its nuclear program.
“Iran has come for a balanced agreement, not a surrender,” he wrote.
Iran seeks a deal to steady a troubled economy
Iran’s internal politics are still inflamed over the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, with women still ignoring the law on the streets of Tehran. Rumors also persist over the government potentially increasing the cost of subsidized gasoline in the country, which has sparked nationwide protests in the past
Iran’s rial currency plunged to over 1 million to a US dollar earlier this month. The currency has improved with the talks, however, something Tehran hopes will continue.
Meanwhile, two used Airbus A330-200 long sought by Iran’s flag carrier, Iran Air, arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport on Thursday, flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed. The planes, formerly of China’s Hainan Airlines, had been in Muscat and re-registered to Iran.
The aircraft have Rolls-Royce engines, which include significant American parts and servicing. Such a transaction would need approval from the US Treasury given sanctions on Iran. The State Department and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran could purchase new aircraft and had lined up tens of billions of dollars in deals with Airbus and Boeing Co. However, the manufacturers backed away from the deals over Trump’s threats to the nuclear accord.


Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

Updated 20 April 2025
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Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

  • the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.

Port Sudan: For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
“But his arm is swollen and he can’t sleep at night from the pain.”
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.
In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.
Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Humanitarian operations in El-Fasher have been severely disrupted due to “access constraints, a critical fuel shortage and a volatile security environment,” with health services particularly affected, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said.
’Opened their homes’
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.
In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.
Table salt as disinfectant
By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.
But not everyone makes it in time.
On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.
But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.
Trying to recover from his leg wound, the aid coordinator Mohamed pleaded from his sick bed for “urgent intervention from anyone who can to save people.”
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday called for aid airdrops.
“If the roads to El-Fasher are blocked, then air operations must be launched to bring food and medicines to the estimated one million people trapped there and being starved,” head of mission Rasmane Kabore said.


Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

Updated 20 April 2025
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Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

  • The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed

WASHINGTON: The father of a US-Israeli hostage held in Gaza said on Saturday he remains hopeful his 21-year-old son was still alive after Hamas said it could not account for his status.
Adi Alexander, whose son Edan was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured on October 7, 2023, called on the United States to engage in direct talks to free the remaining hostages – dead and alive – abducted during the deadly attack launched by Hamas two years ago in southern Israel. “I think we should engage back with them directly and see what can be done in regards to my son, four American dead hostages and everybody else,” the father said in an interview on Saturday.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Father urges US to engage in direct talks for hostages

• Hamas claims uncertainty over Edan Alexander’s fate

• US State Department demands immediate release of hostages

“It seems like the negotiations are stalled, everything is stuck and we are kind of back to a year ago,” he added. “It’s really concerning.” Hamas had previously agreed to release Edan Alexander, believed to be the last surviving American hostage held by the militant Palestinian group, as well as the bodies of four other Americans it captured on October 7, 2023. The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed. Reuters could not verify Hamas’ claim.
Hamas abducted Edan Alexander when he was 19 during its attack that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered Israel’s ongoing incursion in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas.
Edan, who holds dual nationality, grew up in New Jersey. His father said his son was an “all-American kid, great athlete ..., such a loving, loving boy” who found himself in “the wrong place, wrong time.”
Hamas recently released an undated video, purportedly of Edan. His father Adi said, “He looked very scary to us — just a horrible, horrible video.”
A hostage video is, by definition, made under duress and the statements in it are usually coerced, according to international law groups and human rights experts.
He said if he could speak to his son now, he would tell him, “Just believe. You know, nobody forgot about you. Definitely not your parents, and everybody is fighting for your release on the highest level in the States and I believe also in Israel.”
Fifty-nine hostages remain in Gaza. Fewer than half of them are believed to be still alive.
A US State Department spokesperson had no comment on the status of Alexander but reiterated that Hamas must immediately release him and all remaining hostages, and that Hamas “bears sole responsibility for the war, and for the resumption of hostilities.”

 


Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

Updated 19 April 2025
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Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

  • “I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said
  • “We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Saturday to bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’ demands, insisting the military campaign in the Palestinian territory had reached a “critical stage.”
“I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said, in his first comments since Hamas, seeking a permanent end to the Gaza war, rejected a new truce proposal from Israel.
“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win.”
The remarks drew a swift rebuttal from an Israeli campaign group representing the hostages’ families, which accused Netanyahu of having “no plan” for securing the captives’ freedom.
“There is one clear, feasible, and urgent solution that can be achieved now: reach a deal that will bring everyone home — even if it means stopping the fighting,” Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
Netanyahu, however, insisted that ending the war now would embolden the country’s enemies.
“Ending the war under these surrender conditions would send a message to all of Israel’s enemies: that abducting Israelis can bring Israel to its knees. It would prove that terrorism pays — and that message would endanger the entire free world,” he said.
Hamas, Netanyahu said, was “demanding the end of the war and the continuation of its rule,” as well as a full Israeli withdrawal, “which would enable Hamas to rearm and plan more attacks against us.”
“If we commit to ending the war, we will not be able to resume fighting in Gaza,” he said.
“So I ask you — did our soldiers fight in vain? Did our heroes fall and suffer for nothing?“