“If they don’t do it, they’ll be blown away very quickly. They’ll be blown away,” Trump said at an aside during Davos.
Hamas terrorists in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip December 3, 2025.(photo credit: REUTERS/STRINGER)ByREUTERSUpdated: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it should be known within three weeks whether Hamas will agree to give up its weapons, and threatened action if the group does not.
“That’s what they agreed to. They’ve got to do it. And we’re going to know … over the next two or three days – certainly over the next three weeks – whether or not they’re going to do it,” Trump said in a question-and-answer session following his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“If they don’t do it, they’ll be blown away very quickly. They’ll be blown away.”
Palestinians stand near the rubble in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 17, 2026 (credit: REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer)
Trump’s Board of Peace announced
The president’s statements come after the members of the US-backed Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza were announced.
The BoP is the US-backed international transitional body for Gaza. Trump has noted that he intends to expand it to rival the United Nations.
The White House has named US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as members of the initiative’s founding Executive Board. Notably, Trump invited 50 world leaders from various countries, including Israel, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and China.
The 15-member Palestinian “technocratic” body, chaired by Dr. Ali Sha’ath, a Gazan engineer and economist with previous ties to Fatah, is tasked with restoring core civilian services and managing early recovery and reconstruction.
Official says move is ‘posture change’; Tehran signals fast trials and executions for protesters as official death toll in crackdown passes 2,500, though actual number may be much higher
File: A US Air Force B-52 Stratofortress aircraft from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, arrives at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar on April 9, 2016. (Staff Sgt. Corey Hook/U.S. Air Force via AP)
Amid concerns of a new round of fighting with Iran, some personnel were advised to leave the US military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Wednesday and Israel’s official state plane was briefly flown out of the country, as Iran said it was at “peak readiness” for potential conflict.
Tehran has said it will attack Israel and US military bases in the Middle East if US President Donald Trump were to carry out strikes in response to Iran’s mass killing of anti-government protesters.
According to an Israeli assessment, Trump has decided to intervene, although the scope and timing of this action remains unclear, an unnamed Israeli official told Reuters.
Three diplomats told the news agency that some personnel had been advised to leave the US military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
One of the diplomats described the move as a “posture change” rather than an “ordered evacuation.”
There was no sign of a large-scale movement of troops off the base to a nearby soccer stadium and shopping mall, as took place last year in the hours before Iran targeted the base with missiles in retaliation for US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear targets.
This frame grab from videos taken between January 9 and January 11, 2026, and circulating on social media purportedly shows images from a morgue with dozens of bodies and mourners after crackdown on the outskirts of Iran’s capital, in Kahrizak, Tehran Province. (UGC via AP)
The US embassy in Doha had no immediate comment and Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Al Udeid is the Middle East’s largest American base, housing around 10,000 troops. Ahead of the US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program in June, some personnel were moved off US bases in the Middle East.
Also on Wednesday, Israel’s state Wing of Zion plane took off from the Nevatim Air Force base near Beersheba and headed out over the Mediterranean, landing in Greece’s Crete.
The plane had departed Israel ahead of past rounds of fighting with Iran to avoid it being targeted by Iranian missiles, sparking speculation that this was the case.
However, the plane returned to Israel hours later, after unnamed Israeli officials cited by Hebrew-language media said it was engaged in a regularly scheduled training mission.
The official ‘Wing of Zion’ state airplane is seen at Ben Gurion Airport on October 20, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
On June 13, hours after Israel launched its attack on Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile sites, Wing of Zion took off from Ben Gurion Airport. Prior to Iran’s April 13, 2024, missile and drone attack on Israel, Wing of Zion was flown out from Nevatim Airbase, which was later targeted.
Trump has been openly threatening to intervene in Iran for days, though without giving specifics.
In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, the US president vowed “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters. “If they hang them, you’re going to see some things,” he said. He also urged Iranian to keep protesting and take over institutions, declaring “help is on the way.”
Relatives of 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, who was detained last week, have said they have been informed he would be executed on Wednesday. A relative said that a court had issued a death sentence “in an extremely rapid process, within just two days.”
Hengaw, an Iranian Kurdish human rights group, told Reuters on Wednesday it had not been able to confirm whether the sentence had been carried out.
Protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. It said Wednesday that at least 2,571 people had been killed and more than 18,100 had been arrested in the more than two weeks of protests. The Mossad is said to believe the death toll is more than twice as high.
On Wednesday, a funeral ceremony was held in Tehran for over 100 members of the security forces killed in the wave of protests.
Iranians attend the funerals of security forces personnel killed in a crackdown on protests in Tehran on January 14, 2026. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)
The ceremony, attended by thousands of people waving flags of the Islamic Republic, began with prayers being read out for the dead outside Tehran University, according to state media.
Meanwhile, Revolutionary Guards’ Aerospace Commander Majid Mousavi claimed that Iran’s stockpile of missiles has increased since its 12-day war with Israel last year, and that the Islamic Republic was at “peak readiness” ahead of the potential fighting.
“We are at the peak of our readiness,” Mousavi was quoted as saying by state media, adding that wartime damages have been repaired and output in various areas by the Guards’ aerospace forces is higher than before June 2025.
Iranians visit an exhibition showcasing missiles and drones in Tehran on November 12, 2025. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Last month, NBC reported that Israeli officials were concerned about Iran’s growing ballistic missile program, with one source warning that, left unchecked, the country’s production could climb to as many as 3,000 missiles per year.
Another report has suggested that Israel believes Iran currently possesses some 2,000 ballistic missiles, roughly the same number it had on the eve of the 12-day war. Analysts are said to have concluded that the damage Israel inflicted on Iran’s ballistic missile program during the conflict with the Islamic Republic was “less severe” than initially assessed.
Israeli police have allowed Jewish visitors to bring printed prayer texts onto the Temple Mount for the first time, marking a notable shift at the highly sensitive Jerusalem holy site
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Illustration – Jewish visitors on the Temple MountHozrim lahar
Israeli police have, for the first time, permitted Jewish visitors to enter the Temple Mount carrying printed prayer materials, marking a notable shift in the management of one of Jerusalem’s most sensitive religious sites.
According to multiple reports, Jewish worshippers were handed liturgical leaflets on Wednesday morning ahead of their ascent to the compound.
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The leaflets reportedly include religious guidelines for visiting the site, a prayer to recite before ascending, and the Amidah, a central prayer in Jewish liturgy.
Until now, while discreet forms of Jewish prayer had increasingly been tolerated, bringing any religious items or printed texts onto the site—such as prayer books, tallit, or tefillin—remained strictly prohibited.
Police have not issued an official statement on the change. Beyadenu, an organization advocating for Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount, said that for now only a specific brochure produced by a Temple Mount-affiliated yeshiva has been approved, though the policy could evolve further.
Itamar Ben-Gvir leads prayers on Temple Mount
Under longstanding understandings between Israel and Jordan— which administers the site through the Islamic Waqf—non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa compound, is officially prohibited. These arrangements are intended to preserve the fragile status quo at the site, sacred to Jews as the location of the ancient Temples and to Muslims as home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock since the 7th century.
In practice, enforcement of these restrictions has eased in recent years. Previously, Jewish visitors found praying were routinely removed or detained.
That approach has softened under National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a vocal supporter of expanding Jewish prayer rights at the site. Jewish worshippers are now often permitted to pray quietly and, in some areas—particularly on the eastern side of the esplanade—to prostrate themselves.
Beyadenu described the introduction of printed prayers as a significant step.
“This is something the police once enforced with extreme strictness,” a spokesperson said, noting that possession of liturgical texts previously resulted in immediate expulsion.
The shift follows the recent appointment of Avshalom Peled, an associate of Ben Gvir, as Jerusalem district police commander. According to Haaretz, his predecessor reportedly left the role after resisting political pressure to further relax regulations governing the site.
