Today, Jared Kushner unveiled a reconstruction blueprint for Gaza at the Board of Peace ceremony in Davos, projecting the territory as a coastal tourism and commerce hub capable of housing up to three million people within three years.
The presentation featured AI-generated renderings of high rise developments and waterfront districts.

Kushner said the initiative assumes complete Hamas demilitarization and full implementation of the ceasefire agreement. "People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work," he said.

The blueprint divides reconstruction into phased zones. Initial focus centers on workforce housing, demolition, and rubble removal….projected for the first two to three years. Kushner cited regional precedent: "In the Middle East, they build cities like this with two, three million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen."

The second phase, branded "New Gaza," envisions industrial zones, employment centers, data centers, parks, and coastal tourism infrastructure. Renderings showed high-rises along the beachfront. Kushner projected "100% full employment and opportunity for everybody" once momentum builds.

A separate zone, "New Rafah," focuses on the southern border city and the crossing into Egypt, positioning it as a transit and commercial hub.

Here is a full scope look at the U.S. Hamas Demilitarization Plan:

Core Principles

Implementation

Verification & Withdrawal

Kushner disclosed that Kirgabay, identified as "one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know," volunteered to lead the master plan "not for profit, really because of his heart." Trump reinforced the real estate focus: "I'm a real estate person at heart, and it's all about location. Look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property. What it could be for so many people. It'll be so, so great. People that are living so poorly are going to be living so well."

Kushner made demilitarization the main theme of the plan. "Without that, we can't rebuild. So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza from achieving their aspiration, and that's very important," he stated.

The next hundred days will focus on enforcing demilitarization through a new Gaza government, continuing humanitarian aid, and creating conditions for economic transition.

Kushner credited broad international cooperation: Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE, as essential to the ceasefire. He called for media and social platforms to "calm down for 30 days." He said: "I think that the war is over. Let's do our best to try working together. Our goal here is peace between Israel and the Palestinian people."

He appealed to the private sector: "From the private sector, there'll be amazing investment opportunities. I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it."

A donor conference is scheduled in Washington in coming weeks to announce initial financial commitments.

Kushner framed the Board of Peace as an institution for systematizing peace implementation globally. "When we got this deal done, we didn't really find too much expertise or know how on how to do it," he said. The board would document best practices from global education, healthcare, and governance systems and make them public.

"A lot of the things that President Trump is doing in America, if they're working, we should all be copying them. If we find what's working in other countries, we should be copying them too," Kushner added.

The plan depends on Hamas complying with demilitarization, international donors committing capital, Israel ceding governance authority to a Palestinian administration, and security stabilizing rapidly enough to permit construction.

Kushner's "no plan B" statement signals commitment but admits no flexibility if conditions change. If Hamas resists demilitarization, if Palestinian factions reject governance structure, if regional tensions spike, or if Israeli military operations resume, the master plan collapses by design.

Kushner emphasized the next hundred days as critical for ceasefire consolidation. If demilitarization verification, governance transition, and rubble removal begin immediately, early reconstruction phases could gain momentum before political opposition or security incidents derail progress.

The master plan bets that development logic, international cooperation, and U.S. backing can transform Gaza into an economic hub. Whether it reflects genuine post-war possibility or assumes too much remains to be seen.

The United States executed a dramatic strategic shift in Syria this week, pivoting from its longtime reliance on Kurdish forces to embrace Syria's new government under Islamist leader Mohammed Jolani…..even as reports emerged of ISIS flags raised in recaptured territories and serious questions about Jolani's actual ties to extremist elements. U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack informed SDF commander Mazloum Abdi in a closed-door meeting that Damascus under Jolani is now Washington's primary counterterrorism partner, effectively sidelining the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces whose role he described as "largely expired."The United States executed a dramatic strategic shift in Syria this week, pivoting from its longtime reliance on Kurdish forces to embrace Syria's new government under Islamist leader Mohammed Jolani…..even as reports emerged of ISIS flags raised in recaptured territories and serious questions about Jolani's actual ties to extremist elements. U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack informed SDF commander Mazloum Abdi in a closed-door meeting that Damascus under Jolani is now Washington's primary counterterrorism partner, effectively sidelining the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces whose role he described as "largely expired."

The timing is troubling. Yesterday (Jan 21), video footage surfaced showing a fighter linked to Jolani waving an Islamic State flag at the gates of Raqqa, Syria's former ISIS stronghold. Geolocation data and analysis of the scene including a wheat monument built after the city's 2017 liberation….confirmed the footage is recent.
Yet even as these images circulated, U.S. Central Command announced the transfer of 150 ISIS detainees from a facility in Hasakah to Iraq, with plans to eventually relocate up to 7,000 ISIS fighters to Iraqi run facilities.

For over a decade, the SDF…a Kurdish-dominated alliance trained and equipped by the U.S., served as Washington's primary ground force against ISIS in Syria.
The partnership proved effective: U.S. and partner forces detained over 300 ISIS operatives in 2025 alone and killed over 20. But with Bashar al-Assad's fall and Jolani's ascent, the Trump administration has calculated that working through Syria's new government is politically and diplomatically simpler than managing an autonomous Kurdish force.

Barrack's message to Abdi was blunt: your services are no longer needed. This mirrors Trump's broader push to extricate the U.S. from regional entanglements and avoid costly proxy arrangements. By recognizing Jolani….a former al-Qaeda affiliate commander who rebranded his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group as a nationalist movement…..Washington avoids the complexity of managing Kurdish autonomous aspirations while gaining direct access to Syria's government apparatus.

Trump himself showed approval, telling reporters: "I've spoken with the President there, and he is making tremendous progress, truly tremendous.
We're happy about that. We lifted all sanctions, giving them a chance to breathe. He is working very, very hard, and I think he's going to put it all together."

The emergence of ISIS imagery in Raqqa raises immediate questions about either Jolani's control over his own forces or his actual commitment to counterterrorism. Raqqa was ISIS's de facto capital until 2017, when U.S.-backed Kurdish forces liberated it after months of fighting. The flag raising suggests either a deliberate symbolic act by Jolani linked fighters or a complete loss of command authority over subordinate units.

Admiral Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, announced the detainee transfer initiative as a coordinated effort with "regional partners" to prevent ISIS escapes and maintain security. Cooper also spoke by phone with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, "discussing adherence to the ceasefire with the Syrian Democratic Forces and coordination on transferring ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraq, while reaffirming a shared commitment to defeating ISIS."

But the premise of Cooper's statement….that Jolani's government and U.S. forces share an unambiguous commitment to defeating ISIS, is questionable given the Raqqa flag incident. If elements within Jolani's coalition are sympathetic to ISIS or using ISIS imagery for psychological effect, transferring detainees to Iraqi custody becomes a game of hot potato rather than a genuine security upgrade. Iraq's detention system is notoriously porous, with recurring escapes and sectarian manipulation of prisoner rosters.

The irony is sharp: the U.S. is abandoning a Kurdish partner whose operational effectiveness is proven in exchange for a Syrian government whose stability and ideological reliability remain untested.

Trump's framing of the Syria situation as straightforward progress reflects his preference for transactional relationships over alliance management. By lifting sanctions on Syria, Trump signals he expects Jolani to deliver on counterterrorism in exchange for economic relief and diplomatic recognition.
The downside is that Jolani enters negotiations with maximum leverage. He knows Trump wants out of Syria, wants to appear decisive, and wants to avoid the messy business of managing Kurdish territorial claims. Jolani can get his concessions….more sanctions relief, security guarantees, implicit tolerance for HTS's governance including sharia law implementation, while also offering minimal reciprocal commitments on counterterrorism.

Many critics say being soft on Jolani risks repeating a pattern the U.S. has cycled through in the Middle East: engaging with Islamist adjacent regimes, providing resources and legitimacy, then discovering years later that those regimes either harbor extremist elements or become extremist themselves.
The Taliban in Afghanistan, various iterations of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS itself (which emerged from remnants of the former Iraqi military) all followed similar trajectories.

For the Kurds, the shift is a betrayal. The SDF lost thousands of fighters battling ISIS and held vast territories at great cost. Now they are being cast as obsolete while their former enemy's ideological cousins gain Washington's backing.

With the ISIS detainee transfers underway and Jolani consolidating power, the immediate risk is operational chaos during the handoff period. If Jolani's forces cannot maintain control over northeastern Syria while Iraq absorbs thousands of ISIS prisoners, the region could become a recruitment and reorganization hub for the group.

During Iran's deadliest crackdown in years, with thousands killed and the entire nation cut off from the internet, the Islamic regime made a curious choice: it broadcast Tucker Carlson on loop across state television. While ordinary Iranians sat in total darkness unable to contact family or document atrocities, their government ensured citizens saw an American broadcaster arguing that nuclear weapons could stabilize the region and that the West, not the regime, was the real threat.
Days later, Carlson published a newsletter making exactly that case about Iran.

In early January, Iran exploded into the largest anti-regime protests in years. Starting around January 8, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown, severing 80 million people from global communication, social media, and external news sources. Phone networks and landlines were disrupted across vast areas. 

It was, by any measure, an information war. The regime controlled the narrative through state media while ordinary Iranians could not organize, share evidence of abuses, contact family abroad, or access any news contradicting government claims of calm.

Into this vacuum, IRIB….Iran's state-controlled broadcaster, made a deliberate choice. Footage and reports from Iranian diaspora accounts, opposition figures, and social media showed Carlson's content airing on loop in Persian across 24/7 state news channels. This was considered regime approved propaganda. Unlike a separate incident weeks later when opposition hackers briefly hijacked state TV to broadcast exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the Carlson broadcasts were systematic, dubbed, and continuous.

What was being broadcast? Clips of his interviews and commentary critical of U.S. and Israeli policies, arguments against American military interventionism, and skepticism toward regime-change operations. In the regime's messaging, it all amounted to one point: the West is the aggressor; Iran is the victim defending itself.

While Iranians had no way to verify what was happening outside their borders, the regime presented Carlson as evidence that even inside the "Great Satan," there were voices questioning American hegemony. For Tehran's shrinking base of true believers, it was validation: the government's line that domestic unrest was orchestrated by the West rather than born from economic collapse and civil repression was being echoed by a prominent American voice.

Senator Ted Cruz highlighted the absurdity on X, pointing out that Carlson was being used to legitimize regime narratives at the exact moment the regime was committing mass atrocities. Here was an American talking head arguing against intervention in Iran, broadcast by Iran's oppressors while they throttled their own people's ability to communicate.

Critics labeled Carlson a "useful idiot"....someone whose genuine skepticism about American foreign policy was being weaponized by adversaries as cover for internal repression. The regime's calculus was transparent: if a credible American voice says the U.S. is the real problem in the Middle East, then any domestic resistance to Iran's rule must be a Western plot, not authentic discontent.

Then, on January 20, 2026, Carlson published his nuclear Iran newsletter. In it, he questioned whether an Iranian nuclear weapon could actually be destabilizing, framing it through the North Korea lens. He argued that no country would use nuclear weapons because doing so would be "an act of suicide," and suggested that deterrence might actually prevent U.S. intervention.

His core claim: a nuclear Iran might force America to leave the region alone, incentivize Israel to abandon goals in Gaza and the West Bank, and potentially make the Iranian government "less oppressive because it wouldn't have to worry about the West's constant decapitation ambitions."

As Carlson published these words, Iranians are still in communications blackout, still being killed or detained, and still seeing his arguments retransmitted by their oppressors as justification for the crackdown. The regime's subtext was clear: see, even American conservatives agree the West is the problem, not us.

On top of that, Tucker has previously stated that nuclear is “evil”...And now he supports a nuclear Iran? 

Carlson's analogy to North Korea ignored some basic facts about Iran. The Korean Peninsula has not been conflict-free since 2006….North Korea continues provocative weapons tests, cyber attacks, and regional destabilization.
More critically, North Korea's nuclear arsenal has not made its government less repressive. If anything, the regime uses nuclear weapons to consolidate control domestically while deterring external interference with internal crackdowns. By Carlson's own logic, a nuclear Iran would use the bomb to entrench tyranny, not liberalize.

Iran's track record supports this fear. The regime maintains extensive networks of regional proxies…Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis….and has launched numerous attacks on U.S. interests. Unlike North Korea, which is generally isolated, Iran actively seeks regional dominance and has explicitly stated its desire to destroy Israel and challenge American presence across the Middle East.

Carlson dismissed these concerns as fearmongering from "hawks" like Senator Lindsey Graham and former intelligence officials. But the evidence comes not from Washington talking points…it comes from the very conduct of Iran's regime at the moment his words were being broadcast as propaganda.

This is not Carlson's first embrace of Tehran sympathetic narratives. In June 2025, he criticized U.S. officials for what he called fabricating Iran threats to justify regime change, citing Libya's fate under Gaddafi. In 2025, he also conducted a notable interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, lending the authoritarian leader a platform without the adversarial questioning typical of serious journalism.

His "America First" foreign policy stance, skepticism of Middle East entanglements and opposition to regime-change wars…. Would be intellectually coherent if applied consistently. But Iran's regime has successfully weaponized his particular framing: portraying external pressure as the root cause of instability, rather than internal authoritarianism.

The regime's choice to broadcast Carlson while executing thousands tells you something important about his messaging. Tehran's propaganda apparatus does not amplify voices that threaten it. It amplifies voices that fit its narrative. By airing Carlson while suppressing its own population's ability to communicate, Iran signaled that his arguments: the U.S. is the aggressor, intervention destabilizes regions, nuclear deterrence might prevent wars, aligned with the regime's interests. Interesting.

So now, Tucker’s newsletters and commentary have become tools in an authoritarian regime's information warfare against its own people and against Western audiences skeptical of military action.

The people of Iran… with blackout still ongoing, thousands dead, families still separated, would likely have different views on whether appeasing the regime’s nuclear ambitions serves their interests or further pushes down the boot on their necks.

Add thousands about to be executed for the crime of “crime against Allah”