President Donald Trump remains adamant that his administration will engage in ‘direct’ nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday in Oman, while Tehran appears to remain equally steadfast in its insistence the negotiations will be ‘indirect.’

Middle East envoy Stever Witkoff is scheduled to travel to Oman, where he could potentially be meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, though the Iranian official has so far maintained the talks will be held through a third party.

While it remains unclear who will get their way regarding the format of the discussions, Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, said this public controversy between Washington and Tehran is all a game of leverage.

‘Both sides have an incentive to either overrepresent or underrepresent what is happening,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘These are often the negotiations before the negotiations.’ 

‘For the White House, the desire to be seen as having direct talks with the Islamic Republic is high,’ he said, pointing to the lack of direct engagement between Washington and Tehran dating back to his first term and the regime’s deep disdain for the president, as witnessed in an apparent assassination attempt. 

While the Iranian government has long held contempt for the U.S., a sentiment that has persisted for decades, Trump is ‘very different,’ Ben Taleblu said.

The security expert highlighted the 2020 assassination of top Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the crippling effect of the U.S.-sanctioned maximum-pressure campaign and Trump’s open support for the Iranian people as the major issues that have rankled the Iranian regime.

‘Trump is a very bitter pill to swallow, and I think the supreme leader of Iran once said that the shoe of Qasem Soleimani has more honor than the head of Trump,’ Ben Taleblu said. ‘Being seen as directly negotiating with someone [like that] would be making the Islamic Republic look like a supplicant. 

‘The U.S. wants to be seen as having driven Iran to the negotiating table, and the Islamic Republic does not want to be seen as being driven to the negotiating table,’ he added. 

Tehran’s chief advantage is the fact that, despite severe U.S. sanctions and geopolitical attempts to halt its development of a nuclear weapon, it has made serious gains in its enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade quality, as well as with its missile program, a critical component in being able to actually fire a nuclear warhead.

It also has drastically closer ties with chief U.S. adversarial superpowers like Russia and China, whose position and involvement in countering Western attempts to disarm a nuclear Iran remains an unknown at this point. 

While Iran holds significant leverage when it comes to negotiating with the Trump administration on its nuclear program, Washington has a plethora of levers it can use to either incentivize or coerce Tehran into adhering to international calls for the end of its nuclear program.

‘The U.S. actually has a heck of a lot of leverage here,’ Ben Taleblu said, pointing to not only more economic sanctions, including ‘snapback’ mechanisms under the United Nations Security Council, but also military options.

Trump last month threatened to ‘bomb’ Iran if it did not engage in nuclear talks with the U.S.

But some have questioned how long the administration will allow negotiations to persist as JCPOA-era snapback sanctions expire in October 2025.

The White House would not confirm for Fox News Digital any time restrictions it has issued to Iran, but Trump on Wednesday told reporters, ‘We have a little time, but we don’t have much time.’

‘The regime has its back against the wall,’ Ben Taleblu said. ‘A military option, given what has been happening in the Middle East since Oct. 7, 2023, is an increasingly credible option against the Islamic Republic of Iran.’

‘And the regime is engaging, now, to delay and prevent a military option from ever materializing,’ he added. ‘They are hoping to use talks with the Americans as a human shield against the Israelis.’

‘So long as you’re talking to America, the Israelis aren’t shooting at you,’ Ben Taleblu continued. 

Trump this week said that it would be Israel who would take the lead on a military strike on Iran, not the U.S., should nuclear talks fail, which again could be a negotiating tactic as Israel has already demonstrated it will not hesitate to militarily engage with Iran.

‘Pursuing wholesale disarmament of the Islamic Republic of Iran is incredibly risky, and it doesn’t have a great track record of succeeding,’ Ben Taleblu said.

The Iranian expert said the only way to actually take on the Islamic Republic would be through a ‘broader’ and ‘more holistic’ strategy that focuses not only on nuclear nonproliferation but removing the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ scaling up sanctions and having a ‘ground game’ to counter the regime through cyber, political and telecommunication strategies ‘for when Iranians go out into the street and protest again.’

‘What the Islamic Republic would always want is to have you focus on the fire and not on the arsonist, and the arsonist is quite literally a regime that has tried to kill this president,’ Ben Taleblu said.

The Senate has voted to confirm the general who told President Donald Trump that ISIS could be eradicated ‘very quickly’ with loosened rules of engagement during his first term to the role of chairman of the Joint Chiefs. 

The vote came in the wee hours of Friday morning after Democrats rejected a GOP attempt to quickly confirm Caine on Thursday and get out of town.

The vote tally was 60 to 25, with 15 Democrats supporting the Trump nominee.

An Air Force F-16 pilot by background, Caine will be the first National Guard general to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Trump plucked him from retirement to reactivate and serve as his top military advisor after firing Gen. C.Q. Brown in February. 

Brown had been behind a 2022 memo laying out diversity goals for the Air Force.  

Caine will be the first Joint Chiefs chairman who was not a four-star and the first to come out of retirement to fill the role. He hasn’t been a combatant commander or service chief, meaning Trump had to grant him a waiver to serve in the role. 

Caine acknowledged his unconventional nomination during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee: ‘In our family, we serve. When asked, we always say yes. Senators, I acknowledge that I’m an unconventional nominee. These are unconventional times.’ ​

He worked as the associate director of military affairs for the CIA from 2021 to 2024 and founded a regional airline in Texas. He was a White House fellow at the Agriculture Department and a counterterrorism specialist on the White House’s Homeland Security Council.

Caine was among a group of military leaders who met with the president in December 2018 at the Al Asad airbase in Iraq. Trump was there to deliver a Christmas message and hear from commanders on the ground, and there Caine told Trump they could defeat ISIS quickly with a surge of resources and a lifting of restrictions on engagement. 

”We’re only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,” Trump said Caine told him. ”But if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over – from the base that you’re right on, right now, sir. They won’t know what the hell hit them.” 

Trump had claimed Caine was wearing a red MAGA hat the first time he met him – a claim Caine repeatedly denied during the hearing.

‘Sir, for 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission, and I have never worn any political merchandise,’ Caine told Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss. 

Trump, when he picked Caine, praised him as ‘an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.’

Caine vowed his duty would be to advise the president on defense considerations without any political influence. 

The role, he said, ‘starts with being a good example from the top and making sure that we are nonpartisan and apolitical and speaking the truth to power,’ Caine said.

Trump’s first chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, has now become a top foe – the president recently stripped him of his security clearance and had his portrait taken down at the Pentagon. 

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink is stepping down, the State Department confirmed Thursday, as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, said Brink would be leaving her role, though she didn’t give a specific departure date. 

The news comes at a critical moment for U.S. foreign policy as officials work to ease tensions and end the grinding war in Eastern Europe.

Brink, a career diplomat with decades of experience, was nominated by then-President Joe Biden and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in May 2022, just months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

She became the first U.S. ambassador to serve in Kyiv since 2019, helping reestablish America’s diplomatic presence after embassy staff were evacuated in the early days of the war.

Before serving in Ukraine, Brink was the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia and worked in top roles at the National Security Council. She speaks Russian and is known for strongly defending U.S. interests in Eastern Europe.

While in Ukraine, Brink was a vocal supporter of American military aid and often appeared publicly with Ukrainian leaders. Her resignation comes as the Trump administration shifts focus toward ending the war through diplomacy and renewed talks with Russia.

Also on Thursday, U.S. and Russian officials held rare face-to-face talks in Istanbul aimed at repairing long-strained diplomatic relations. The State Department said the two sides exchanged formal notes to finalize an agreement that would stabilize banking services for each country’s embassies, a step seen as key to keeping diplomatic missions operational.

In recent years, both countries have imposed financial restrictions on each other’s embassies and slashed staffing due to the fallout from the war. A finalized banking deal could open the door to restoring some of those lost diplomatic connections.

The State Department said follow-up talks are expected, though no date has been set.

Brink’s departure lands at a moment of major transition in U.S. foreign policy. Her exit may also clear the way for a new ambassador more closely aligned with the Trump administration’s push for a ceasefire deal.

The State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quipped that the Trump administration has wiped out ‘99.9%’ of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI) from the military during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. 

President Donald Trump questioned Hegseth about whether the military had eradicated 100% of DEI efforts under his leadership, as Cabinet members shared updates on their own agencies’ attempts to purge such policies. 

‘99.9, sir – I’m going to get that last point,’ Hegseth said. 

The Trump administration has unveiled multiple initiatives to curb DEI initiatives within the military, including signing an executive order in January barring transgender people from enlisting and serving openly in the military. 

However, two federal judges issued nationwide injunctions in March blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the ban while the lawsuit is pending. In a judgment rendered on March 19, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., said the Trump administration’s order was ‘soaked in animus,’ and discriminated based on a person’s transgender status.

‘Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,’ Reyes wrote in the decision.

Trump signed another executive order in January banning DEI content in K–12 schools that receive federal funds. While military service academies were originally exempt since they are not classified as K–12 institutions, the Pentagon issued instructions to the Naval Academy to remove DEI-related books from its library in March. 

Included in the list of nearly 400 books purged are ‘How to be Anti-Racist’ and ‘Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America’ by Ibram X. Kendi, as well as ‘Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America,’ by former Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams.

Kendi is the founding director emeritus of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. He rose to national prominence following the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Hegseth has made clear that the Pentagon will not tolerate any DEI initiatives under his watch. 

‘The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at @DeptofDefense,’ Hegseth said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in January. ‘The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays.’ 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

China has been ramping up its military actions around Taiwan in what one top commander warned on Thursday are not just drills, but ‘rehearsals.’

‘China’s unprecedented aggression and military modernization poses a serious threat to the homeland, our allies and our partners,’ Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said during a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. ‘With military pressure against Taiwan increasing by 300%, China’s increasingly aggressive actions near Taiwan are not just exercises, they are rehearsals.’

Beijing has long looked to assert its dominance over Taiwan as it aims to ‘reunify’ the island with mainland China in a move the West and Taipei have warned is against Taiwan’s wishes and would disturb the region’s status quo.

Taiwan identifies as a sovereign nation. However, it is officially recognized by China, the United Nations and the U.S. as part of the ‘One China’ policy – though the U.S. has increasingly warned Beijing against disrupting regional stability by forcibly ‘reunifying’ the island with the mainland. 

‘While the [People’s Liberation Army] PLA attempts to intimidate the people of Taiwan and demonstrate coercive capabilities, these actions are backfiring, drawing increased global attention and accelerating Taiwan’s own defense preparations,’ Paparo said. 

But it is not only China’s military posture toward Taiwan that concerns top military commanders. 

‘China’s outproducing the United States in air missile, maritime and space capability and accelerating these,’ Paparo said. ‘I remain confident in our deterrence posture, but the trajectory must change.’

The Indo-Pacific commander warned that China is outstripping the U.S. in the production of fighters at a rate of 1.2 to 1, and warned that the U.S. is falling behind when it comes to shipbuilding, as well as some missile and space-based capabilities. 

‘They built combatants at the rate of 6 to 1.8 to the United States,’ Paparo told the lawmakers, in reference to China’s investment in producing ships, aircraft and weaponry. 

‘We’ve got to get at the problems of why we don’t have enough [of a] combat logistics force – and that’s shipbuilding. Why we don’t have enough labor,’ Paparo said. ‘And those are looking hard at pay and incentives in order to recruit and retain those people.’

A 2022 Defense Department report long withheld by the Biden administration has recently surfaced and reveals that seven U.S. service members showed COVID-19-like symptoms after having competed in the World Military Games in Wuhan, China, months before the deadly virus first broke out in the U.S.

The explosive disclosure suggests that the virus was circulating in Wuhan months before China disclosed it to the world in December 2019. The games took place in October 2019, two months earlier. 

It also challenges the Biden administration’s public claims in 2021 that there was no evidence that any American participants contracted the virus at those games. The CIA, FBI and Energy Department have all now suggested that the COVID-19 virus pandemic may have originated via a lab leak from the city’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The 2022 report was legally required to be released publicly online more than two years ago ‘in a searchable format,’ but it only became available some time in late March, when the Trump administration uploaded it to a Defense Department website, The Washington Free Beacon reported. 

The outlet reported that the Biden administration did send copies of the report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022, but the report was never made available online by the administration. 

The report found that of the 263 U.S. delegation that traveled to the event, seven U.S. members showed COVID-19-like symptoms between Oct. 18, 2019 and Jan. 21, 2020. All symptoms were resolved within six days and could be attributed to other respiratory illnesses​.

The report also found that there were no significant outbreaks of COVID-19-like symptoms at Defense Department facilities after the athletes returned, although service members were not tested for COVID-19 or antibodies as testing was not available at that early stage of the pandemic.

However, Washington was one of the earliest states to show a spike in COVID-19, and the U.S. team used chartered flights to and from the games via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Prospect reported.

Then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told the Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had ‘no knowledge’ of any COVID-19 infections among the troops that participated in those games.

The Pentagon, during Trump’s first term, said in June 2020 that there was no reason to test members as the event was held ‘prior to the reported outbreak,’ Prospect reported. 

Other international athletes reported having come down with COVID-19-like symptoms, the Daily Mail reported in June 2021. 

The games have long been suspected as being a ‘super spreader’ event which took place close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health was conducting gain of function research there. 

‘Many of the athletes said ​Wuhan looked like a ‘ghost town’ in October‚ two months before China reported the first case of coronavirus there,’ the New York Post reported.

Former Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., in 2021 said that those months were critical and could have helped the United States understand the disease and ‘shut down travel earlier in order to stop the spread and ultimately save potentially millions of lives.’

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A Mexican drug lord was released from custody after being convicted in the 1985 killing of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena. 

Ernesto ‘Don Neto’ Fonseca Carrillo, one of the co-founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, was freed last weekend after completing his 40-year sentence, a federal agent confirmed to the Associated Press. 

Fonseca, 94, had been serving the remainder of his sentence under home confinement outside Mexico City since being moved from prison in 2016. The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday from Fox News Digital. 

Rafael Caro Quintero, another Guadalajara Cartel co-founder who also was convicted in the murder, was one of 29 cartel figures Mexico sent to the United States in February. It’s unclear if the U.S. is now looking to bring Fonseca into custody. 

At the time of his murder, the DEA and Camarena had been utilizing a series of wiretaps to make sizeable drug busts inside Mexico. 

In February 1985, as Camarena left to meet his wife for lunch outside the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, he was surrounded by officers from the DFS, a Mexican intelligence agency that no longer exists. 

‘Back in the middle 1980s, the DFS, their main role was to protect the drug lords,’ former DEA agent Hector Berrellez, who led the investigation into Camarena’s murder, told Fox News in 2013. 

The DFS agents then took Camarena, blindfolded and held at gunpoint, to one of Caro Quintero’s haciendas nearby. 

For more than 30 hours, Caro-Quintero and others interrogated Camarena and crushed his skull, jaw, nose and cheekbones with a tire iron. They broke his ribs, drilled a hole in his head and tortured him with a cattle prod. As Camarena lay dying, Caro-Quintero ordered a cartel doctor to keep the U.S. agent alive. 

The 37-year-old’s body was found dumped on a nearby ranch about a month later. 

In 2013, Caro Quintero walked free after serving 28 years in prison.  He was released after a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the kidnapping and killing of Camarena. 

Caro Quintero was arrested again by Mexican forces in July 2022 after he allegedly returned to drug trafficking. 

Fox News’ Greg Wehner, William La Jeunesse, Lee Ross and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

— The Food and Drug Administration is phasing out an animal testing requirement for antibody therapies and other drugs in favor of testing on materials that mimic human organs, the FDA announced on Thursday. 

‘For too long, drug manufacturers have performed additional animal testing of drugs that have data in broad human use internationally. This initiative marks a paradigm shift in drug evaluation and holds promise to accelerate cures and meaningful treatments for Americans while reducing animal use,’ FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, said in comment provided to Fox News Digital. 

 ‘By leveraging AI-based computational modeling, human organ model-based lab testing, and real-world human data, we can get safer treatments to patients faster and more reliably, while also reducing R&D costs and drug prices. It is a win-win for public health and ethics.’ 

The phase-out focuses on ending animal testing in regard to researching monoclonal antibody therapies, which are lab-made proteins meant to stimulate the immune system to fight diseases such as cancer, as well as other drugs, according to the press release. 

Instead, the FDA will encourage testing on ‘organoids,’ which are artificially grown masses of cells, according to the FDA’s press release obtained by Fox Digital. 

‘The FDA will promote the use of lab-grown human ‘organoids’ and organ-on-a-chip systems that mimic human organs – such as liver, heart, and immune organs – to test drug safety. These experiments can reveal toxic effects that could easily go undetected in animals, providing a more direct window into human responses,’ the press release says. 

The FDA will also encourage the use of AI while testing drugs, including building computer modeling that can predict a drug’s behavior, Fox Digital learned. 

The phase-out will include updating its guidelines to recognize research conducted on organoids and through AI.

‘Companies that submit strong safety data from non-animal tests may receive streamlined review, as the need for certain animal studies is eliminated, which would incentivize investment in modernized testing platforms,’ the FDA explained in its press release. 

The FDA is slated to also work with fellow federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Toxicology Program and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to ‘accelerate the validation’ of the new testing standards and will hold a public workshop later this year to further discuss the matter. 

‘For patients, it means a more efficient pipeline for novel treatments. It also means an added margin of safety, since human-based test systems may better predict real-world outcomes. For animal welfare, it represents a major step toward ending the use of laboratory animals in drug testing. Thousands of animals, including dogs and primates, could eventually be spared each year as these new methods take root,’ Makary said. 

DOGE Chief Elon Musk says the organization is set to save the U.S. government more than $150 billion in cuts to waste and fraud in FY 2026.

Musk made the comment during a public Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday. 

‘We anticipate savings in FY 26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion. And, I mean, and some of it is just absurd. Like people getting unemployment insurance who haven’t been born yet,’ Musk said.

‘People ask me how are you going to find waste and fraud in a government? I’m like, well, actually, just go in any direction. That’s how you find it. It’s very common. It’s, as a military would say, a target-rich environment,’ he continued.

‘So, I think we’re doing a lot of good, and in excellent collaboration with the Cabinet, to achieve these savings. And it will actually result in better services for the American people. And then we’re going to be spending their tax dollars in a way that is sensible and fair and good,’ he added.

Thursday’s Cabinet meeting comes less than a day after DOGE announced the cancelation of 108 ‘wasteful contracts’ on Wednesday.

DOGE said the contacts had a ceiling value of $250 million and a savings of $70 million. 

The problem contracts included a $14,000 commitment by the Department of Health and Human Services for an ‘executive transformational leadership training program.’

Another was a $5.2 million contract with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources agency for the federal government, to ‘provide strategic advisory and assistance to improve and transform current processes and organizational systems.’

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers is moving to ensure the U.S. government is free from Chinese-made technology after President Donald Trump hiked tariffs against Beijing.

Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, is leading the Securing America’s Federal Equipment (SAFE) Supply Chains Act alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

It would impose new guardrails on the technology the U.S. government is able to purchase by forcing a federal agency or office to only purchase it from ‘original equipment manufacturers’ or ‘authorized resellers,’ according to the bill text obtained by Fox News Digital.

The bill targets U.S. government technology purchased through the ‘gray market,’ an alternative channel for purchasing and selling genuine goods without the authorization of the manufacturer.

Fallon said his bill ‘dovetails’ with Trump’s hawkish stance on China.

‘With the rising threat posed by Chinese aggression, not only in the Indo-Pacific, but here at home by means of artificial intelligence and cyberattacks, it’s critical that the Department of Defense secure its vital infrastructure,’ Fallon explained to Fox News Digital. 

‘In order to do so, we must ensure that the U.S. military only purchases electronic equipment from approved vendors that are free from adversarial, particularly [Chinese Communist Party], influence.’

He praised Trump’s ‘bold leadership’ in the U.S. ‘breaking its dependency on Communist China.’

‘The SAFE Supply Chains Act dovetails with this endeavor and is in the best interest of U.S. national security,’ he said.

The White House said Thursday it had imposed 145% in new tariffs on China, up from the 125% Trump announced the day before.

While hiking rates on China, Trump said he would reduce tariffs on other countries that did not retaliate against the U.S. to his baseline of 10%.

‘Look, for years we’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of by China — and others, in all fairness — but by China, there’s a big one. And it’s just one of those things,’ Trump said Wednesday.

Fallon’s bill has a counterpart in the Senate led by senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Gary Peters, D-Mich.