Hello and welcome to background briefing available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm me and Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the assassination of Hamas's top negotiator by a missile in Tehran,

where Ismail Haniyah was attending the inauguration of Iran's new president.

We'll discuss the almost certainty Israel was behind the assassination,

along with the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut,

who was the right hand of the leader of Hezbollah, and assess how much Netanyahu is taunting Iran,

Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis to bring it on in a regional war with Iran and its proxies.

Joining Asid Nadehashimi, the director the director of the Aloid Center for Muslim Christian Understanding

and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Edmenei

Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

A non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World, he's the author of The People Reloaded,

the Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future, and sectarianization, mapping the new politics of the

Middle East. Then we'll go to Israel to speak with Haggay Matar, an award-winning Israeli

journalist and political activist. He is the executive director of 972 magazine, and we will discuss the detention of

9 IDF soldiers by military police for the gang rape of Palestinian prisoners, 36 of whom have

been tortured to death in a detention facility in the Negev Desert. We will discuss the

demonstrations at the prison and the military court

in support of the arrested soldiers by a right-wing mob that included members of the Knesset.

Then finally we'll get a profile of Arizona's Senator Mark Kelly, who was on the shortlist

of likely vice-presidential nominees to be chosen by Kamala Harris before next Tuesday

and speak with Jim Small, editor-in-chief of the Arizona Mirror, a non-profit newsroom in

...