‘Criminal explosion’ strikes synagogue in Belgium, official says

(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Sunday that a “small number of Americans” are directly affected by an Ebola outbreak occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The CDC is working with other U.S. agencies to coordinate the safe withdrawal of the Americans,” the CDC said in its statement. The agency did not confirm the number of people affected, the type of exposure or whether any individuals had experienced symptoms.

“We don’t discuss or comment on individual dispositions,” Dr. Satish Pillai, the CDC’s incident manager for Ebola, said during a press briefing on Sunday. “It is a highly dynamic situation, and at this point, what I would say is, we continue to assess, we will continue to keep you posted as we learn more.”

On Saturday, the World Health Organization said in a statement that the ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda constituted a “public health emergency of international concern.”

As of Sunday, the CDC said there were 10 confirmed Ebola cases and 336 suspected cases in the DRC. There had been 88 suspected deaths in the DRC, as well as two confirmed cases and one confirmed death in Uganda from people who had traveled to the DRC.

The CDC said that the risk to the American public remains low. Ebola virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person and does not spread through casual contact or air.

“CDC has extensive experience and expertise in responding to Ebola outbreaks,” CDC acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said on a call with reporters on Friday. “It is a large outbreak, and we were just informed yesterday about it.”

He added, “We’re absolutely committed to making sure that they can get resources as they need. We have helped with other Ebola outbreaks in the past … We have lots of hard-earned lessons. The key thing here is to know that we are absolutely involved.”

It is the DRC’s 17th outbreak of Ebola since the disease emerged in the 1970s, according to the WHO.

This strain of Ebola is caused by Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no therapeutics or vaccines, the WHO said.

The WHO has declared international public health emergencies over previous Ebola outbreaks as well as COVID-19 and mpox.

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(TORONTO) — Investigators are looking for two suspects and clues after shots were fired at the U.S. consulate in Toronto on Tuesday morning.

There were people inside the building at the time, but no one was injured, Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said. Officers got a call about the shooting around 5:29 a.m., and found shell casings and damage to the building when they arrived, he noted.

Witnesses observed two people emerging from a white Honda CR-V and discharge a handgun at the consulate before driving away, according to Barredo.

“This is very early in the investigation. It is very active, and we are aggressively assigning investigative resources to determine what happened and to bring the offenders to justice,” he told reporters.

Chris Leather, the chief superintendent for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Ontario Criminal Operations, told reporters that it is “being treated as a national security incident,” and prompted increased security around embassies in Toronto and Ottawa.

“There will be no tolerance for any form of intimidation, harassment, or harmful targeting of any communities or individuals in Canada. We want to ensure that everyone’s safety and security remain at the forefront of everything we do,” he said.

Leather noted that it was too early to determine if the shooting was linked to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

The RCMP is in communication with the FBI and other U.S. agencies, Leather said.

He noted that recent incidents in Toronto and elsewhere have prompted a need for heightened vigilance and security around diplomatic missions, expressing hope that these measures will help “bring the temperature down in the coming days and weeks.”

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(LONDON) — President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off their joint military campaign against Iran in late February, urging the fall of the Islamic Republic.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump said, addressing Iranians in announcing the start of “major combat operations.”

A month of unrelenting combined U.S.-Israeli strikes appears to have significantly eroded Iran’s military capabilities and killed many of its most senior leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died alongside dozens of top Iranian officials in a series of airstrikes on his official residence in Tehran in the opening salvos of the war.

But despite Trump’s assertion that the “war has been won,” Iranian forces continue to launch attacks on Israel, regional U.S. bases and American partners across the Middle East, while commercial shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz remains constrained, with large numbers of cargo vessels in limbo on either side of the narrow waterway at the southern entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Trump has also asserted that there had been “complete regime change,” with the leaders the U.S. is now dealing with in recently announced negotiations “more moderate” and “much more reasonable,” the president told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

Trump named Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the powerful speaker of the Iranian parliament, as the direct U.S. negotiating partner, though Ghalibaf has denied the assertion.

But in Tehran, the cadre of officials – Ghalibaf among them – emerging to take the reins of power appear as committed as the slain figures they are replacing, many of them veterans of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), analysts have said.

The regime in Tehran, according to Danny Citrinowicz – the Israel Defense Forces’ former top Iran researcher, now at the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Israel – “is weaker than it was before the conflict, but it is also more radical. The IRGC has further consolidated its influence over decision-making, eroding what little internal balance once existed within the regime.”

The war appears to have given Tehran long-term leverage over the Strait of Hormuz – a “weapon of mass disruption,” as described by Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group during an online briefing hosted by the think tank this week.

If the Islamic Republic survives the war, and its immediate aftermath by suppressing simmering anti-regime movements, its new leaders may be emboldened to retain perceived strategic advantages, chief among them control of the Strait of Hormuz, analysts who spoke to ABC News said.

That regime sentiment seems to be crystalizing. Ghalibaf, for example, told the IRNA state news agency that Iran’s strategy now rests on its control of three pillars: “missiles, the streets, and the Strait.”

Inside Iran, some sense that shift. Darius – who did not wish to use his real name for fear of reprisal – told ABC News from Tehran of a growing sentiment that “the source of legitimacy for the Islamic republic is shifting” from the clerical establishment to the IRGC.

“Now, the de facto leaders of the country are the generals in the IRGC. And they are actually running the show at the moment,” Darius said.

IRGC ascendant

The IRGC was formed shortly after the Iranian Revolution by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, ultimately emerging as the new Islamic Republic’s primary tool for projecting its ideology and influence beyond its own borders.

The IRGC entrenched and expanded its power during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. With its battlefield exploits and ideological zeal, the IRGC came to embody the wartime concept of “sacred defense,” Johns Hopkins University professor Vali Nasr wrote in his recent book, “Iran’s Grand Strategy.”

Observers have long considered the IRGC to be the most powerful military, political and economic institution in Iran.

Even before the most recent U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, many experts warned that decapitation strikes or a push for regime change risked empowering the IRGC to seize the state’s other mechanisms of power – though others suggested the force had no need to openly seize control, given its de facto hold over the country.

The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, served in an elite IRGC unit during the Iran-Iraq War, and analysts have suggested his candidacy was strongly supported by the force.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s newly appointed military adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, was drawn from the senior ranks of the IRGC, as was the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who was selected to replace Ali Larijani when the latter was killed by Israeli airstrikes in mid-March.

Meanwhile, IRGC veteran Ghalibaf – who has reportedly long been close to Mojtaba Khamenei – remains alive and appears to be in a position of influence, one of the few top prewar officials to have survived the U.S.-Israeli campaign.

Inside Iran, some sense that shift. Darius told ABC News from Tehran of a growing sentiment that “the source of legitimacy for the Islamic republic is shifting” from the clerical establishment to the IRGC.

“Now, the de facto leaders of the country are the generals in the IRGC. And they are actually running the show at the moment,” Darius said.

Reading the ‘mosaic’

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi credited a “mosaic defense” strategy with enabling the Iranian military to launch retaliatory strikes despite the killing of so many senior military officials in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign.

That decentralized approach also appeared to cause some tactical confusion. Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, for example, both denied Iranian responsibility for several reported Iranian drone and missile attacks in the region in the days after the war erupted.

A decapitated regime in Tehran may pose challenges to American negotiators seeking a peace deal, Citrinowicz said, telling ABC News that the killings have created a “worse” strategic situation by dispersing power.

The centralized decision-making power enjoyed by Ali Khamenei is no more, he said. “Now, how are you going to work with them? It’s going to be very hard to reach an agreement with them,” Citrinowicz said, referring to the newly emergent group of leaders.

Trump himself appeared to acknowledge a diffusion of power in Iran as a result of the American-Israeli assassination campaign. “We have nobody to talk to, and you know what, we like it that way,” the president said earlier this month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told “Good Morning America” this week there are “fractures” within the Iranian leadership, though he would not say with whom the administration is in contact.

Yossi Kuperwasser – the former head of the IDF’s military intelligence research division – told ABC News that the emergence of hardliners “was to be expected.”

“Once you eliminate Khamenei, he’s not going to be replaced by some wishy-washy character, but somebody who is committed to the cause and the IRGC is going to be in charge,” Kuperwasser said.

But Kuperwasser also noted that figures currently touted as Iranian negotiators, such as Ghalibaf, might not live to see the end of the war. Indeed, Larijani was often noted as among the prime negotiating candidates before his killing. “I’d guess there are going to be more eliminations,” Kuperwasser said.

As the war progressed, both U.S. and Israeli officials have distanced themselves from earlier suggestions of regime change. Instead, officials refocused the strategic narrative on their ambitions to degrade Iran’s conventional military – especially ballistic missile – and nuclear programs.

These targets, according to Kuperwasser, were always the Israeli priority.

“Simultaneously, we are trying to weaken the regime so as to create the conditions that can be used by the people of Iran in order to promote something that can bring about the removal of the regime from power,” Kuperwasser said. But that will not necessarily occur in the short term, he added.

‘Missiles, the street, the strait’

Citrinowicz said that whatever structure emerges to negotiate with the Trump administration will likely be influenced toward more hardline demands by the killing of its predecessors.

On the nuclear file, too, “it goes without saying” that Tehran’s outlook will have shifted, Citrinowicz said. Before the war, Iranian leaders had already publicly committed not to pursue nuclear weapons, though Tehran was refusing to accept Trump’s demands of zero enrichment. Now, Citrinowicz said, the new Iranian leadership “might find themselves rushing toward a bomb.”

Iran also has more leverage in the Strait of Hormuz than it did before the conflict, even with the significant military degradation that the U.S. and Israel appear to have inflicted. Officials in Tehran have suggested that Iranian control over the strait – and the requirement for those transiting it to coordinate with Tehran and pay tolls – is the new baseline.

Rubio hinted at long-term disruption in the Persian Gulf last week. “Immediately after this thing ends, and we’re done with our objectives, the immediate challenge we’re going to face is an Iran that may decide that they want to set up a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” Rubio said.

Hamidreza Azizi of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs think tank said during the Crisis Group briefing that Tehran will be set on a conclusive settlement, not merely a ceasefire that would allow the U.S. and Israel to rearm and resume the conflict at a later date, as was the case after the 12-day conflict in June.

“Deep inside Iran’s strategic thinking, there is an understanding that ceasefires are only a means for the United States and Israel to buy time,” Azizi said. While before the conflict, Tehran appeared willing to make concessions on the nuclear file and other issues, now Iranian leaders see an opportunity to achieve what they were unable to across years of negotiations.

The endgame, Azizi said, could be one in which Iran preserves “some sort of leverage” over the Strait of Hormuz or secures “substantial sanctions removal.”

For its part, Citrinowicz said the U.S. appears to be scrambling. “There are so many people in the U.S. that understand this regime, but the administration is behaving like it’s Venezuela. It’s crazy,” Citrinowicz said, referring to the American operation in January to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and support his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as Maduro’s successor.

Last week, the U.S. delivered 15-point plan to end the war, which was widely interpreted as a blueprint for Tehran’s capitulation. Iranian demands are likewise maximalist, calling for reparations and for the U.S. to abandon its regional bases.

“Nobody’s getting their wish list,” Dalia Dassa Kaye of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations said during this week’s Crisis Group briefing.

In the meantime, the battlefield costs will rise and geopolitical implications deepen across the Middle East. “Even if this ends tomorrow,” Kaye said, the costs have already been paid. “It’s going to take years to recuperate the damage.”

“This is not something you put back in a box,” he added.

ABC News’ Desiree Adib and Somayeh Malekian contributed to this report.

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