The Department of War announced a nearly $21 billion, five-year contract to produce Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM). While AIM-120 missiles are designed for warplanes in air-to-air combat, they can also be used as ground-launched missile interceptors.
The Pentagon announced the contract on Monday. “We are working across the defense industry to ramp production and build the Arsenal of Freedom,” said Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey. “This award strengthens our ability to equip the Joint Force and our allies with a proven air-to-air capability, ensuring our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage.”
Raytheon, or RTX, is the primary beneficiary of the contract. The deal was issued as an undefinitized contract action, meaning details of the cost and number of missiles could change. Under the contract, Raytheon will produce up to 1,900 AMRAAM missiles annually.
The AMRAAM, or AIM-120, missiles are designed to be fired from America’s fleet of fighter jets. There are multiple variants of the AIM-120 missile, and the Pentagon announcement did not disclose how many of each variant Raytheon has been contracted to produce.
While the AIM-120 is primarily an air-to-air missile, it can also be fired from the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), a ground-based air defense system. The AMRAAM-ER is an extended-range variant designed specifically for ground-based air defense.
Ukraine has relied heavily on the NASAMS system for air defenses. In April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the US has between 4,000 and 4,500 AIM-120 missiles in its stockpile. It noted that the US could use the AIM-120s as a cheaper option to down Iranian drones compared to Patriot or Standard Missiles. However, the AIM-120s still cost $1 million each.
After being abducted by plainclothes ICE agents from his New York apartment building in March of 2025 and locked away in immigration jail for 104 days, Mahmoud Khalil has been freed and reunited with his family. But Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who was heavily involved in the student-led justice for Palestine movement, is still being targeted by the Trump administration and still faces the possibility of deportation. In this exclusive interview, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez sits down with Khalil to speak about his new book, “No Land to Stand On,” and his continuing fight for freedom and justice.
Credits:
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated. Maximillian Alvarez:
I’m here at the Parkway Theater and I’m sitting with Mahmoud Khalil, freed political prisoner and former Columbia graduate student who was heavily involved in the student-led Justice for Palestine movement and who because of that was abducted by plainclothes ICE agents from his New York apartment building in March of 2025 and locked away in immigration jail for 104 days. But he’s here with us now. Brother Mahmoud, welcome home, man.
Mahmoud Khalil:
Thank you for having me, Max. Thank you so much.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It’s such an honor to be here with you in person. I don’t even know how you begin to answer this question, but I can’t begin without asking it. How are you and your family doing after enduring this horrific nightmare that is sadly still not over?
Mahmoud Khalil:
We’re doing all right and we’re taking it day by day, really sort of surviving under the threat of deportation at any second or worse than that, whatever this government may decide to do at any point. But our fear is part of the fear of so many families in this country who are now worried about sending their children to school. We are in September now and I know a lot of kids are worried about going to school because they’re either undocumented or their parents are undocumented. I’m thinking about just the families in Minnesota and in New York and in Texas who are now under the threat of being really deportation by this or ripping them apart. It’s not only deportation. Haitians
Maximillian Alvarez:
In
Mahmoud Khalil:
Ohio,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Latinos in
Mahmoud Khalil:
Southern California. Anyone who this administration sees as the other or sees as a threat to whatever plans they have. So in that bigger scheme of things also, at least I know my son will be fed tonight. There wouldn’t be a bomb being thrown on our house as happening in Gaza right now as we are speaking. So in the bigger scheme of things, we’re grateful. We’re grateful for the community that’s supporting us.That’s what’s keeping us going forward right now is just the level of support, the level of solidarity, the community that was built around us because of what this government has imposed on me and my family.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I didn’t plan to ask this, but as a father as well, I have to. What was it like to hold your kid that first time?
Mahmoud Khalil:
I don’t think anyone can describe that feeling. It’s just the first time I held Dean was in detention in a courtroom, in an immigration courtroom where verdicts of deportations happen, like rain daily in these rooms. So it was a little bit weird that I was able to reunite with my family in a place where families are being torn apart. But at the same time I felt victorious because that’s a moment that this government tried to steal from me. Although it was only for one hour, but felt the world to me. And of course now being with Dean, a lot of people ask me, “What gives you purpose?” And just seeing Dean and dreaming of a world where he can live in dignity and safety, inequality, just like anyone else, as an American citizen who has the same rights and responsibility as any other American citizen, regardless of his background, regardless of the ethnicity, regardless of anything, really it’s just like being a human.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And how could you not look at your kids and our children and not fight? We’re going to give this world over. We’re going to give their future over to these psychopaths, to these fascists, to these fanatical nut jobs? Of course not.That’s just not an option. But it’s really hard to put that into action on a day-to-day level when we’re being bombarded by so much terror and awfulness. I interviewed members of your former graduate student union at Columbia after you were taken. I’ve interviewed members of my former grad student union in Michigan where activists are having their homes raided by the FBI. I mean, students, community members, workers, people all over this country who are terrified to fight back or do anything because of what happened to you. But you continue to speak out. You wrote this book, No Land to Stand On. You’re here in Baltimore to speak to folks.
What do you and this book have to say to all of us out there about confronting that fear and not living in fear?
Mahmoud Khalil:
I think the fear is very real and I would be lying if I said I don’t have fear about myself, about my children, about my family. But courage is not the absence of fear. It is actually acting despite the fear. I would be lying if I said, “Oh, I’m not afraid.” Or when you are dealing with such injustice and as you’ve mentioned, just these fascist tactics and the way that they dehumanize us, whether as immigrants or whether as Palestinians or just as someone who does not agree with what this government is doing. So to take you back, I think a day after my release, I decided to go to a protest. And I usually am not that protest guy, although I was very heavily involved in the Columbia movement, but I decided to go mainly to give a message that despite all this violence inflicted upon me from the government, from the university, from the institutions and the establishment in this country, I refuse to be silent.
And now my book is out because the government tried to silence me. Or in essence, they tried to make an example out of me so you and others wouldn’t speak out. But to me, this book is a testament that I refuse to be silent. Now the government gave me a platform and they would take it with a grace and responsibility that I should take this platform to advocate for those who don’t have voices. At any moment now there’s over 70,000 immigrant in ICE detention. At every second, there’s at least 70,000 immigrants in detention. That we know
Maximillian Alvarez:
Of. Now they’re like, we don’t even know if they’re keeping proper track.
Mahmoud Khalil:
Exactly. I don’t know how many went through the administrative errors that this administration every now and then does. So really this administration tried to silence me and I refuse to be silent. And that’s why I want to give people not hope, but at least some sort of despite all this violence, you can still speak out because what we’re dealing with right now is this administration, they are bullies and what our parents teach us when a bully come to bully you, you should not – Stand up, baby. Exactly. So that’s what I’m doing right now. And part of my fight is not about staying in the US. It’s more around what happened to me is wrong and shouldn’t happen to anyone else. Even if I win my case tomorrow, I may decide to leave the day after, but that’s totally besides the main point, which is what’s happening is wrong and should be confronted.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I want to end on that note because ever since you were taken, one of the reasons that people found so much hope in your story was that you continued to use your voice to advocate for others who were locked away in immigration jail, people who couldn’t speak English, people who didn’t have access to lawyers and who could get contact with the outside world. And that meant so much to so many. And of course you ended up in that jail because you were speaking out and speaking up along with millions around the country and around the world against a genocide in Palestine funded by our tax dollars. So here we are in 2026 and I’m not going to say it doesn’t feel like we’re losing everything and that it was all for naught, but I know a lot of our viewers can feel that way when they look at what’s happening to the ruins of Gaza and to the continual onslaught to erase that people from that land while back home they’re using the same tech to disappear our neighbors and family members.
So how do you put all of this in perspective and how do we continue to fight even when it feels like all is lost?
Mahmoud Khalil:
I think hope and resistance is our only option right now because this administration wants us to feel defeated, want us to feel that nothing is working. And the moment that we succumb to that feeling is the moment that they win because even if we remain silent, because I know people who were targeted and remain silent, the administration did not stop going after them because their mere existence was a problem to this administration. And that’s why I’m hopeful because I don’t have any other option. And the fact that the president of the United States came after an unknown student speaks a lot to the successes of our movement because it was impactful. It was actually changing things on the ground. It was changing public opinion in droves. That’s why the president of the United States felt the need to go after a random student to make an example out of him so that others would fear speaking out.
And that’s I think my only message in terms of why we should be hopeful because the change doesn’t happen in a day and night. It is the persistence. It is the continued resistance against all odds when you see that nothing is happening, but you continue because you believe in that. And that’s the thing as Palestinians, why we continue resisting despite everything all odds against us is that we are righteous. We know that human beings, regardless of their faith and nationality, they can see that in us and they would support us. So that’s why we have a strong belief in our cause that it’s a righteous cause. We don’t need millions and billions of dollars to convince public opinion about the righteousness of our cause or not. It’s just like we need to present it and that’s it. And that’s what they are fearing right now.
That’s why you see the establishment in this country is scrambling to control the media, to buy TikTok and to buy CNN and all of these just because we are actually winning and they know they will not be able to stop us. That’s why they’re bringing these all new tactics about, in my case, they’re weaponizing the immigration law from 1952. And in other cases they’re bringing all these alien laws.
Maximillian Alvarez:
They’re
Mahmoud Khalil:
Reaching back to laws from centuries ago. Yeah, 1800 something because they’re looking for tools because we’re actually winning and the public is with us. But also with immigrants, an average American sees that an immigrant is a benefit to this country, whether it is through the work that they do, whether through the diversity they bring. And this country was built upon, I mean recently, I don’t want to stoke about the enslaved people and how this country was built on their shoulders, but recently also immigrants were part of this.
Maximillian Alvarez:
You and I wouldn’t be sitting here if that wasn’t true.
Mahmoud Khalil:
Absolutely. And we absolutely must be conscious of that. And that’s the other thing about why I’m writing the book now, not in five years, because this is urgent. A lot of people ask me, “How would you look at this moment in 20 years?” I don’t want to look at it in 20 years. I want to do what I can do right now to stop it because what’s happening right now is a stain on the constitution, is a stain on the American consciousness, is a stain on every human value that we stand or we say we stand for. And I don’t want to look in 20 years and say, “Oh, we should have done something because it’s happening now in our backyards. An ICE detention center is at least 30 minutes from any one of us right now. If you drive 30 minutes, you would find an ICE detention center.
“I'm hopeful because I don't have any other option. And the fact that the President of the United States came after an unknown student speaks a lot to the successes of our movement”
Israeli forces continued to carry out their usual cross-border raids into southwest Syria today, and while operations were reported in both Daraa and Quneitra Governorates, the most immediate focus seems to be on the northern part of Quneitra, with raids targeting local villages there unusually often. The village of Taranja in northern Quneitra got some […]
The Trump administration has approved arms deals for Israel worth $21.6 billion in just 20 months. Under former President Joe Biden, sales exceeded $17.9 billion.
A mass funeral was held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday for dozens of Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks, whose remains have been recovered from the rubble. Reports vary on the number of people who were buried during the funeral, with Reuters reporting 41 and the Yaffa News Network reporting […]
The ongoing trilateral talks between the US, Lebanon and Israel are, as ever, accomplishing comparatively little. Lebanese PM Nawaf Salam held talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, seeking progress. Salam said it was important for the US to support “tangible results on the ground,” including steps toward an Israeli withdrawal from […]
Israeli attacks in Gaza on Tuesday killed at least five Palestinians, including the head of Hamas’s armed wing, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal. Izz al-Din Al-Beik, the head of Hamas’s al-Qassams Brigades, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza. Hamas confirmed his death, and a funeral […]
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a letter on 29 September addressing the US population – urging it to “force” Washington to “distance” itself from Israel, and expressing a readiness for “coexistence and peace,” while also vowing to continue fighting for Iran’s rights.
“Our purpose in sending a letter to the US people goes beyond media propaganda and creating familiarity with Iran’s reasoning. This is not a short-term or purely promotional move … Choosing a ‘letter’ as a tool to convey our message directly and clearly was a method selected based on the realities on the ground,” said IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi.
“The countries neighboring or located near the US, whether along its land or maritime borders, do not possess the military and security capabilities to pose a serious threat to the US,” he added following the letter’s release, urging US citizens to question Washington’s military expansionism and the presence of hundreds of its military bases across the globe.
Mohebbi went on to ask, “What is the purpose of deploying 800 US military bases around the world?”
The letter itself poses several questions to the US people, while urging them to “see through” the official claims made by Washington.
This included US, as well as Israeli, claims regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
“For 25 years … the [US] claimed that Iran is only … months or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb … If this were true, why has Iran not yet gone through with its plan to build a bomb? If Iran was only a little while away from making the bomb 25 years ago, when it was far less technologically advanced … then it should possess dozens of nuclear bombs today.”
It also pointed to US intelligence reports acknowledging that Tehran is not looking to weaponize its program.
Additionally, it slams US official claims and declares to the US people that Washington’s bases were “decimated” throughout the war.
This has been confirmed through satellite imagery and western media, not just Iranian outlets.
Tehran, through the letter, also repeated its longstanding declarations to the people of the US that Iran is opposed to their government and not them themselves.
“The people who burn the American flag are not hostile to the American people; it is the oppression and aggression of the American government that they are denouncing,” the letter reads.
“We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed,” it adds.
The letter also urges the US people to “distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.”
The letter stresses that Tehran will “continue fighting” despite “all the hardships that our enemies impose on us.”
It comes as reports indicate Washington is planning to renew bombing against Iran. Tehran has vowed much wider retaliation than before in the event of such actions.
Satellite images show utter devastation in Gaza ■ Jerusalem heats up ■ Israeli citizenship only for "good Jews" now? ■ Under Trump, US sold weapons to Israel at a rate of over $1B/month ■ More
Greek journalist and former European Parliament member Stelios Kouloglou filed a criminal complaint Monday against officials at Israeli spyware maker NSO Group, alleging that his phone was infected with Pegasus while he served on a parliamentary inquiry into surveillance software, Anadolu reports.
The complaint was submitted to the Athens prosecutor’s office, Greek public broadcaster ERT reported. Kouloglou said a forensic examination by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found that his phone had been infected around Oct. 21, 2022, and again on March 6 and 7, 2023.
At the time, he was a substitute member of the European Parliament committee investigating the use of Pegasus, Predator and similar spyware. The complaint said the infections coincided with significant phases of the committee’s work.
Kouloglou alleges the spyware could have given those responsible access to communications, contacts, documents, location information and data related to his political work. The complaint seeks an investigation into alleged breaches of communications privacy, unauthorized access to data and violations of personal data law.
Speaking after filing the complaint, Kouloglou said surveillance was an issue affecting all citizens and expressed hope that Greek prosecutors would investigate the case.
His lawyer, Zacharias Kesses, said no action had previously been taken despite the allegations being known.
There is no running away from the fact that there are extremely troubling ideas throughout the Torah, Talmud, Mishneh Torah and Tanya.
Ideas like “choseness”, “promised land”, “return to Zion”, “building the temple”, “tikkun olam”… etc come from no other than Torah itself, soaked in supremacy, dominance aspiration, deception and mass-killing.
We can no longer hide our heads in the sand, pretending not to know, pretending not to see.
Jewish anti-Zionists should move on now, and use all their activism outside the Palestine solidarity movement, direct their work towards their people where serious discussions happen, plans are drawn, funds are raised, weapons are shipped and is genocide plotted and enacted. They should work with their own Jewish communities to try to get them out of the mess of supremacy and genocide they got themselves into.
Instead of wasting their time denying any links between Judaism and Zionism, instead of throwing their energy on controlling the Palestinian discourse, and instead of relentlessly monitoring us, Semite Palestinians lest we slip and “conflate Zionism with Judaism”or say something “antisemitic”, that may offend a Jew, Anti-Zionist Jews should change course and adopt a different role to play.
They should shift their activism within, try to effect change within their own Jewish communities who by vast majority are still supporting the Genocide with all their wealth, their leverage, all their influence and all their might.
They should leave us Palestinians to lead our Liberation Movement, and to narrate our authentic, untamed, unfiltered, unkosherised story without censoring, blacklisting, slandering or intimidation.
The future of the planet depends on the uprooting of Jewish supremacy, deception, hatred and violence from their ideology, and joining the human race as equals not as “chosen”.
Failing to confront the elephant in the room would end up in a World Nakba, like nothing we have ever seen before.
This is a WARNING, a mere WARNING of a brewing global disaster, I see in the horizon, and I am praying that together we would be able to prevent before it’s too late.
Iran has warned the United Nations that US President Donald Trump’s threats to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic constitute a grave development, particularly because the remarks were made from the podium of the UN General Assembly.
Gholamhossein Darzi, Iran’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the UN in New York, raised the issue in a September 27 letter addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the President of the Security Council, Jérôme Bonnafont.
Darzi’s letter came in response to Trump’s September 22 address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, during which the US president said he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no agreement was reached with Tehran. The wording appears in the official UN transcript of Trump’s speech.
Iran says threats made at UN carry wider implications
Darzi said Trump’s remarks were neither isolated nor ambiguous, arguing that they form part of a continuing pattern of public threats against Iran by the president of a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“These repulsive statements are not ambiguous remarks or isolated utterances. They are rather part of a sustained pattern of public threats against Iran by the head of a permanent member state of the Security Council,” Darzi wrote.
“This latest development is particularly grave and alarming because the United Nations General Assembly is not a venue for threats of annihilation,” he added.
The Iranian envoy stressed that the General Assembly serves as the UN’s principal universal forum and was established to promote international peace, cooperation, and relations among states.
In the letter, Darzi referred to several previous statements by Trump that he said demonstrated a broader pattern of threats against Iran.
He cited remarks on March 22 in which Trump threatened to “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants, followed by statements on March 30 threatening destruction of Iran’s energy facilities and other vital infrastructure, including desalination facilities.
Iran calls for UN response to threats
Darzi argued that the issue extends beyond political rhetoric, saying an explicit threat against a sovereign UN member state raises questions concerning the UN Charter, international peace and security, and the prohibition on the threat or use of force.
He further linked the latest remarks to ongoing US-Israeli aggression against its sovereignty and territorial integrity since February 28, as well as attacks that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.
“The issue before the Organization is therefore not merely one of political rhetoric,” Darzi wrote, arguing that failure by the international community to respond could normalize threats against entire nations and undermine the authority of the UN Charter.
The UN has itself emphasized the need for restraint and adherence to international law during the current high-level week. In his September 22 opening address, Secretary-General António Guterres said the principle that force cannot determine whose lives and rights matter was under “profound strain” and called on world leaders to use the week for de-escalation and dialogue.
Iran reiterates right to self-defense
Darzi said Iran would continue to defend itself against any further aggression and reserved its “full and unimpeachable right to self-defense.”
He also said Tehran reserves the right to pursue legal avenues to seek accountability from states and individuals it holds responsible for losses and damage inflicted on the Iranian people.
“Regardless of whether these threats are merely delusional fantasies, they will, as in the past, never materialize or be put into action in the face of the resolute resistance and determined defense of the Iranian people and armed forces,” Darzi wrote.
The Iranian envoy requested that his letter be circulated as an official document of the UN Security Council.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeated his calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory in a new interview with Israel’s Channel 14 that was published on Monday. Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Israeli Defense Ministry, said that the key to forcing […]
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