Iran on Monday confirmed it will not give up its nuclear enrichment program in an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, set to air at 6 pm on Monday’s ‘Special Report.’ 

Araghchi confirmed that the U.S.’s top ambition in preventing Tehran from further developing a nuclear weapon by blocking all enrichment capabilities is unlikely to come to fruition, despite threats of intense international sanctions.

‘We cannot give up enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,’ Araghchi said. ‘Our enrichment is so dear to us,’ he told Bret Baier, anchor and executive editor of Special Report, in a clip released before the full interview airs.

The foreign minister confirmed that the extent of the damage to its nuclear facilities caused by the U.S. strikes last month was ‘serious,’ but he would not comment on whether any enriched uranium survived the strikes.

‘Our facilities have been damaged – seriously damaged,’ Araghchi said. ‘The extent of which is now under evaluation by our atomic energy organization.

‘But as far as I know, they are seriously damaged,’ he added, noting that the damage has also currently ceased all enrichment capabilities for the time being. 

Iran has maintained that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon, but in the lead up to the Israeli and U.S. strikes, security experts were sounding the alarm that Tehran was likely capable of producing at least one nuclear weapon in a matter of days, and several warheads in a matter of weeks. 

While nuclear enrichment is a process needed for nations that also rely on nuclear power, Iran’s nuclear energy usage amounts to less than one percent of the nation’s energy consumption. 

The U.S. has suggested that given the low amounts of nuclear energy which Iran relies on, it should join a consortium that could potentially involve nations like the UAE and Saudi Arabia for its enriched uranium needs for civil nuclear power use. 

But Iran has repeatedly rejected this proposal, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also referring to Tehran’s capabilities as a source of national pride just last month.

‘The number of countries in the world that have achieved a complete nuclear fuel cycle is perhaps fewer than the number of fingers on a person’s two hands,’ Khamenei said in early June. ‘We’re capable of producing nuclear fuel starting from the mine and all the way to the power plant.’

But Iran also faces immense international sanctions and even greater arms restrictions should it fail to reach a nuclear agreement by the end of August – though it is unclear if that agreement must include the U.S. or just European nations including France, Germany and the U.K., also referred to as the E3.

Iranian officials will not only be meeting with its top allies and chief adversaries to the West, Russia and China, on Tuesday, but Tehran is also set to hold talks on Friday with officials from the E3.

Washington and Tehran have yet to resume talks following the U.S. strikes last month.

Former special counsel David Weiss got little support from the Department of Justice (DOJ) when he sought lawyers to help prosecute President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Weiss told Congress during a recent closed-door interview.

Amid delicate plea deal negotiations between Hunter Biden and Weiss in 2023, Weiss said he asked the DOJ deputy attorney general’s office for a team of trial lawyers and received a single resume, according to a transcript of the interview reviewed by Fox News Digital.

‘Actually, as I think about the sequencing, I had started to reach out myself directly to offices or people that I knew and make my own inquiries,’ Weiss told House Judiciary Committee staff of his struggle to hire lawyers for the sensitive job of trying the president’s son.

Weiss appeared on Capitol Hill for the interview in June as part of the committee’s inquiry into the DOJ’s years-long investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden.

Now no longer a DOJ employee, Weiss spoke candidly for hours with the committee, shedding new light on his interactions with the Biden DOJ and giving fresh insight into why Hunter Biden was never charged with certain violations.

Who is David Weiss?

Weiss was appointed U.S. attorney of Delaware during the first Trump administration and began investigating Hunter Biden at that time. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland made Weiss special counsel in August 2023 after a plea agreement with Hunter Biden fell apart.

Republicans had accused Weiss of offering Hunter Biden a ‘sweetheart’ plea deal that involved only misdemeanors. But in an unusual move, a judge rejected the deal, leading Weiss to instead bring two successful indictments against the then-first son, one for illegal gun possession and another for nine tax charges, including three felonies.

Weiss came under enormous scrutiny by Republicans and Democrats for his handling of the investigation, which had become a hyper-political national news story centered on the salacious behavior and wrongdoings of Hunter Biden, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, and allegations that Joe Biden was complicit in his son’s crimes.

Republicans claimed Weiss was not tough enough on Hunter Biden, while Democrats said he was being treated more harshly than a typical defendant because he was the president’s son. Joe Biden ultimately granted an unconditional pardon to his son, a move widely criticized by members of both parties.

Weiss gets ‘one resume’

Weiss said during the interview that he was ‘fortunate enough to obtain a couple very excellent prosecutors,’ a reference to the two DOJ attorneys who handled trial preparations for Hunter Biden.

But, Weiss also indicated that when he first requested lawyers in the spring of 2023, he had to be self-sufficient in finding them and that the deputy attorney general’s office was unhelpful. Weiss noted he did not deal directly with former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco at all and assumed she was recused from Hunter Biden’s cases.

Weiss said that at one point he ran into the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, which handles recruitment, at an event and asked if any hiring progress had been made.

Weiss did not ‘have a whole lot of success’ during that conversation, he said.

‘What do you mean, you didn’t have success? … They didn’t give you lawyers?’ a committee aide asked.

‘I got one resume,’ Weiss replied.

The aide asked, ‘Nobody wanted to come prosecute Hunter Biden?’

‘I don’t want to say that because I don’t know that they weren’t trying to find people,’ Weiss said. ‘All I know was I didn’t get a whole lot of resumes.’

Weiss eventually gained two attorneys, Leo Wise and Derek Hines, who went on to secure a conviction by a jury in Delaware after a week-long trial on gun possession charges and a guilty plea to all nine of Hunter Biden’s tax charges.

A committee aide pressed Weiss on why he felt there was ‘such a drought’ of help at DOJ headquarters.

‘As I said a moment ago … I did not receive a lot of resumes in response to my initial request,’ Weiss said, noting that eventually the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section assisted him.

Asked if the Public Integrity Section helped him because Weiss proactively reached out, Weiss replied, ‘Probably.’

Burisma tax years and FARA

For his testimony, the Trump DOJ gave Weiss permission in a letter to talk to Congress about Hunter Biden’s cases. The department noted, however, that it could not authorize Weiss to talk about the former first son’s confidential tax information.

Weiss suggested, though, that he would have charged Hunter Biden for the 2014 and 2015 tax years if he could have.

‘To the extent I can put together — and this is general — a case that involves more years than not and allows me to more fully develop allegations about a course of conduct and a scheme, that’s better for the prosecution,’ Weiss said. ‘So it’s not like I’m looking to cut out years generally when you’re pursuing a tax investigation.’

During the years in question, Hunter Biden was raking in $1 million per year as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father, then vice president, was overseeing foreign policy with Ukraine. The scenario became ripe for questions about conflicts of interest, in part because of suspicious interactions between Hunter Biden and the Obama State Department.

In Weiss’s final special counsel report, he dodged explaining why he brought charges of failure to pay taxes and tax evasion against Hunter Biden only for the tax years after 2015, citing Joe Biden’s pardon. Now, Weiss said, he would be more willing to talk about it if he were legally allowed to do so.

Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pressed Weiss, saying the ‘political aspects of Burisma’ raised ‘glaring’ questions about the prosecutorial decisions made for the years for which Hunter Biden avoided charges.

‘I understand,’ Weiss replied. ‘Absolutely. Yes. And I wish that I could address it. But it’s my understanding that, for me to trip into 2014 and ’15 is a violation of [U.S. code].’

Weiss also told the committee his team had no serious discussions about charging Hunter Biden under a foreign lobby law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

‘We just couldn’t put together a sufficient case,’ Weiss said.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that the United States will exit the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

‘President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from UNESCO – which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November. This president will always put America First and ensure our country’s membership in all international organizations aligns with our national interests,’ White House Deputy Spokesperson Anna Kelly said on Tuesday.

‘The U.S. continues to demonstrate moral clarity in the international arena and when it comes to its involvement and financial investments in international organizations, and makes it clear that it is unwilling to support entities that promote hatred, historical revisionism, and political divisiveness over advancing shared universal values,’ Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement.

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar also commended the decision, which he said ‘is a necessary step, designed to promote justice and Israel’s right to fair treatment in the U.N. system, a right which has often been trampled due to politicization in this arena.’

‘Singling out Israel and politicization by member states must end, in this and all professional U.N. agencies,’ Sa’ar added.

The move comes as the administration continues to make waves in the international community, and in particular at the U.N. The U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has drawn the ire of the U.N. and other international bodies. 

Additionally, Secretary-General António Guterres has expressed his concerns about the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts, which he said would be ‘especially devastating’ to the world’s vulnerable populations, according to Reuters.

State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement on the exit that ‘continued involvement with UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States.’

‘UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy,’ the statement read. ‘UNESCO’s decision to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.’

Trump withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO in October 2017, during his first term, but former President Joe Biden had the country rejoin the agency in 2023. In 2017, the State Department said the U.S. was withdrawing from the agency for very similar reasons, suggesting UNESCO has not sufficiently fixed the issues at the center of the Trump administration’s concerns.

The Department of Justice signaled a shift in its approach to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche revealing that he has reached out to Ghislaine Maxwell to gauge her willingness to cooperate with prosecutors.

Blanche confirmed Tuesday that, under the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ is now open to hearing what Maxwell might have to offer regarding uncharged individuals who may have participated in Epstein’s criminal enterprise.

‘This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead,’ Blanche said in a post on X Tuesday.

Blanche reaffirmed the July 6 joint statement issued by the DOJ and FBI, which concluded that a thorough review of FBI files related to the Epstein case uncovered no new evidence to support charges against additional parties. 

‘Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,’ Blanche wrote.

That memo, which was signed by FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, sparked controversy after President Donald Trump, Bondi and FBI leaders repeatedly said they would release all documents related to Epstein.

Sources told Fox News that Bongino, who signed off on the memo, complained about it in private following public backlash.

The new outreach to Maxwell is in the hopes that Epstein’s convicted accomplice ‘has information about anyone who has committed crime against victims,’ Blanche said.

‘President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence…’ he wrote. ‘Therefore, at the direction of Attorney General Bondi, I have communicated with counsel for Ms. Maxwell to determine whether she would be willing to speak with prosecutors from the Department.’

The new outreach to Maxwell marks the first time, according to Blanche, that any administration has approached her legal team with an inquiry into potential cooperation. 

‘That changes now,’ Blanche emphasized.

Blanche said he ‘anticipates meeting with Ms. Maxwell in the coming days.’

David Oscar Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, confirmed to Fox News that they are ‘in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully.’

‘We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case,’ he said.

Patel responded succinctly to Blanche’s statement, writing on X Tuesday: ‘Get it.’

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein traffic teen girls. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison and has appealed her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to prosecutors’ and survivor’s testimony, Maxwell helped recruit and groom underage girls, arrange travel and housing, as well as facilitate abuse at properties owned by Epstein.

Victims described Maxwell as a trusted adult figure who manipulated and coerced them into sexual encounters with Epstein and others.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the DOJ and the FBI for comment.

The European Union’s first-ever defense commissioner has issued a stark warning: the world’s ‘most dangerous moment’ could arrive as soon as 2027, when Russia and China may coordinate aggressive moves designed to overwhelm Western defenses.

Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s commissioner for defense and space, echoed recent remarks by U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s top commander for air operations. Both officials highlighted 2027 as a potential flashpoint year when simultaneous military actions by Moscow and Beijing could stretch the transatlantic alliance to its limits.

‘The most dangerous moment can be in 2027, when both Russia and China will make these aggressive moves in a coordinated way,’ Kubilius told reporters during a briefing in Washington.

Grynkewich had warned last week that the United States and its European allies must be prepared to fight two wars simultaneously – one in Europe, should Russian President Vladimir Putin escalate in Ukraine or Eastern Europe, and another in the Pacific if Chinese President Xi Jinping launches an invasion of Taiwan.

‘We’re going to need every bit of kit and equipment and munitions that we can in order to beat that,’ Grynkewich said.

In a speech later Monday evening, Kubilius said the U.S. has the ‘right and reason’ to turn its focus to China.

‘We are recognizing that you, Americans, have really the right and the reason in the longer-term perspective to start to shift more and more toward the Indo-Pacific in order to mitigate Chinese rising military power,’ he said.

‘We Europeans need to ramp up our defense capabilities,’ the former Lithuanian prime minister said, adding: ‘That is what we are doing.’

Their warnings align with growing concerns across the U.S. defense establishment over what is often referred to as the ‘Davidson Window’ – a term coined by former Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Philip Davidson, who testified before Congress in 2021 that China could attempt to forcibly reunify with Taiwan by 2027. The assessment has since become a widely cited benchmark for military planners preparing for a potential crisis in the Indo-Pacific.

The 2027 window has taken on added urgency as China rapidly accelerates its military modernization program, aiming to achieve what Xi Jinping has called ‘world-class’ warfighting capabilities by the People’s Liberation Army’s centennial in 2027. U.S. and NATO officials also fear that Russia, despite sustaining major losses in Ukraine, could reconstitute and redirect its forces toward renewed aggression in Eastern Europe by that same timeframe – placing strategic pressure on two fronts simultaneously.

Kubilius traveled to Washington to assess potential shortfalls in European defense capabilities as the U.S. increasingly pivots its strategic attention toward the Indo-Pacific. He said EU member states are actively preparing for a shift in the American military posture on the continent.

As of 2025, more than 80,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Europe – a presence widely expected to decline in the coming years as the Pentagon presses its European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defense.

‘We are preparing ourselves to take responsibility on our shoulders,’ Kubilius said. ‘We don’t know what Americans will decide.’

Kubilius emphasized that Europe must not only fund its own defense but also build it. He noted that the EU has reduced its reliance on U.S.-made weapons from 60% of total imports to 40%, and hopes to lower that dependency further through increased domestic production.

As defense commissioner, Kubilius is tasked with implementing an $840 billion framework to ‘Re-Arm Europe,’ including a €150 billion loan facility available to member states for building out their armed forces and industrial capacities.

Separately, NATO leaders at last month’s summit in Washington agreed to a sweeping pledge to increase defense spending – raising the benchmark from 2% of GDP to 5% for member countries, a historic shift in alliance posture amid growing global instability.

Adding to the sense of urgency, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would offer advanced weapons systems to Ukraine – on the condition that European partners cover the cost. Western defense ministers convened on Monday to discuss the proposed financing mechanism.

‘We’re going to be sending Patriots to NATO and then NATO will distribute that,’ Trump said last week, referring to the high-value air defense systems that Kyiv has long sought.

Kubilius declined to elaborate on which other weapons may be included in the package, but underscored the critical importance of maintaining unwavering support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

‘China is watching,’ he said. ‘China will be able to make a conclusion that if the West is weak in Ukraine, then we can expect aggressive behavior from China against anyone.’

President Donald Trump slammed Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., calling the lawmaker ‘the worst Republican Congressman’ in a Monday night Truth Social post, while noting that he is seeking a challenger he can support against the incumbent lawmaker.

‘Thomas Massie, the worst Republican Congressman, and an almost guaranteed NO VOTE each and every time, is an Embarrassment to Kentucky. He’s lazy, slow moving, and totally disingenuous – A real loser! Never has anything positive to add. Looking for someone good to run against this guy, someone I can Endorse and vigorously campaign for!’ Trump declared in the post.

The president’s post linked to a video by MAGA KY targeting the congressman for ouster. ‘Let’s fire Thomas Massie,’ the voiceover declares.

Fox News Digital reached out to Massie early on Tuesday morning, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Massie, a fiscal hawk, voted against passage of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Trump has been a vociferous critic of the congressman.

In a Truth Social post last month, the president asserted that Massie ‘is not MAGA,’ and declared, ‘we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary, and I’ll be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard.’

Billionaire business tycoon Elon Musk has indicated that he will donate to support Massie’s re-election bid.