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More than 90% of Iranian missiles intercepted, but a dangerous imbalance is emerging
EXCLUSIVE: As U.S., Israeli and allied forces continue to intercept the vast majority of Iranian missiles and drones, a new report and expert analysis reveal a growing concern behind the headline success: the cost and sustainability of the defense itself.
More than 90% of Iranian projectiles have been intercepted during the war, according to a report obtained by Fox News Digital from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), thanks to a layered regional air defense system built during years of coordination.
But beneath that success lies a widening imbalance that could shape the next phase of the conflict.
The report highlights a critical trend: Iran’s least expensive weapons are proving the most disruptive and are draining costly U.S. and Israeli interceptors.
IRAN’S REMAINING WEAPONS: HOW TEHRAN CAN STILL DISRUPT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ
The current air defense architecture, integrating U.S., Israeli and Arab systems, has proven highly effective at stopping incoming threats. Early warning systems, shared radar coverage and pre-positioned assets have allowed multiple countries to work together to defeat Iranian missiles and drones.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “More than 9,000 enemy targets have been struck to date … Iran’s ballistic missile attacks and drone attacks are down by roughly 90%,” she said, adding that U.S. forces have also destroyed more than 140 Iranian naval vessels, including nearly 50 mine layers.
A surge of U.S. assets before the war, including Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), batteries, Patriot systems, two carrier strike groups and roughly 200 fighter aircraft, helped absorb Iran’s opening salvos and maintain high interception rates, according to JINSA’s report.
But Ari Cicurel, associate director of foreign policy at JINSA and author of the report, said focusing only on interception percentages misses the bigger picture.
“Overall high missile and drone interception rates have been important but only tell part of the story,” Cicurel told Fox News Digital. “Iran came into this war with a deliberate plan to dismantle the architecture that makes those intercepts possible. It has struck energy infrastructure to upset markets and used cluster munitions to achieve higher hit rates.”
IRAN’S DRONE SWARMS CHALLENGE US AIR DEFENSES AS TROOPS IN MIDDLE EAST FACE RISING THREATS
Danny Citrinowicz, a Middle East and national security expert at Institute for National Security Studies and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that imbalance is at the heart of the problem.
“There needs to be a change in the equation,” he told Fox News Digital. “The Iranians are launching drones that cost around $30,000, and we are using missiles that cost millions of dollars to intercept them. That gap is a very problematic one.”
He added that the same dynamic applies to ballistic missiles.
“Building a missile in Iran may cost a few hundred thousand dollars, while the interceptor costs millions, especially when we talk about systems like Arrow,” he said. “It’s easier and quicker to produce missiles than it is to build interceptors. That’s not a secret.”
This cost imbalance is feeding into a broader concern: interceptor depletion.
The JINSA report warns that stockpiles across the region are already under strain. Some Gulf states have used a significant portion of their interceptor inventories, with estimates suggesting Bahrain may have expended up to 87% of its Patriot missiles, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have used roughly 75% and Qatar has used roughly 40%.
Israel is also facing mounting pressure. While officials have not publicly confirmed stockpile levels, the report notes signs of rationing, including decisions not to intercept certain cluster-munition threats in order to conserve more advanced interceptors.
Citrinowicz said that dynamics become more acute the longer the war continues.
“We are now several weeks into the war, and even if the salvos are limited, the issue of interceptors becomes more significant over time,” he said.
Iran has adapted its tactics accordingly, shifting from large barrages to smaller, more frequent attacks designed to maintain constant pressure while gradually draining defensive resources.
These persistent salvos, even if limited in size, force defenders to remain on high alert and continue expending interceptors, accelerating the depletion of already finite stockpiles.
The report underscores that drones pose a unique challenge compared to ballistic missiles.
Unlike missiles, which rely on large launchers and leave detectable signatures, drones can be launched from mobile platforms and can fly at low altitudes that make them harder for radar systems to detect.
For example, A Shahed-136 weighs roughly 200 kilograms and launches from an angled rail mounted on a pickup truck, after which the crew can quickly relocate. That simpler launch profile makes it easier for Iran to disperse, conceal and fire under pressure, the report stated.
Iran also has incorporated lessons from the war in Ukraine, deploying more advanced drones, including those guided by fiber-optic cables that are immune to electronic jamming, and faster variants powered by jet engines.
These innovations complicate interception timelines and increase the likelihood of successful strikes, even against otherwise effective defense systems.
INSIDE THE ISRAELI DRONE UNIT TAKING ON IRAN AND HEZBOLLAH
Despite these challenges, the report emphasizes that the defensive architecture has not failed.
“The architecture has held, but the trajectory is moving in the wrong direction,” Cicurel said. “Reversing it requires moving assets to where the pressure is greatest, hunting Iranian launchers and drones more aggressively, and convoying ships through the Gulf.”
Even with high interception rates, the broader impact of the attacks is being felt.
Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure and shipping have driven oil prices higher and disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrating that air defense alone cannot prevent economic and strategic consequences.
The emerging picture is not one of failing defenses, but of a system under growing strain.
As long as Iran can produce cheap drones and missiles faster than the U.S., Israel and their partners can produce interceptors, the balance may gradually shift.
“As long as the war continues,” Citrinowicz said, “the key question will be whether Iran can produce missiles faster than we can produce interceptors.”
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Michigan cash aid program tailored to new mothers seeks nationwide expansion amid affordability crisis
A cash-assistance program tailored to new and expectant mothers seeks to expand nationwide and become implemented on the federal level.
“States are reaching out to us,” Rx Kids director and pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna told Fox News Digital, Tuesday. “We’re working with them to see how we can implement them.”
Considered the largest cash aid program for prenatal and infant care in the country, Hanna launched the initiative in “response to the Flint water crisis to improve outcomes for kids.”
The cash assistance program is a statewide initiative that’s intended to issue $1,500 cash to new and expectant mothers in the Motor City as well as $500 per month after a child’s birth for at least six months.
MASSACHUSETTS MAYOR WANTS NATION TO SEE POSITIVE IMPACT OF CASH HANDOUTS AS CITY TACKLES POVERTY
Over 1,000 Detroit mothers rushed to Rx Kids last week, according to the city’s mayor, Mary Sheffield. Detroit officials distributed around $1 million to the mothers as part of the city’s Rx Kids program, which launched the application process on Feb. 9.
The program is led by Michigan State University (MSU) and administered by a nonprofit called GiveDirectly, which facilitates donations and cash transfers.
Since Hanna launched the program in 2024, Rx Kids has expanded to several cities across the Great Lakes State, serving 5,600 families “with more than $22 million in direct support during the prenatal and infancy period.” As the program gained momentum across the Great Lake State, Rx Kids was Sheffield’s first priority when she assumed office January. Detroit has roughly 8,000 babies born in the city each year, Rx Kids reported.
Hanna said that the program is not like any other in the U.S., providing a model for other states to follow.
“So, it’s either municipalities or leaders in different states saying, ‘Hey, we also are looking for solutions that support families in this time-bound way, that is plug and play, that is super efficient, that’s addressing housing and childcare and birth rates — all these different things,” Hanna told Fox News Digital.
She went on to say, “For example, Mississippi just declared a public health emergency for rising rates of infant mortality. So, they’re looking for lots of solutions to improve the health of mamas and babies, and Rx Kids is on the table.”
The Mississippi State Department of Health declared a public health emergency in August 2025 due to a sharp rise in infant mortality, with 2024 data showing the highest in over a decade. The state reported that the overall infant mortality rate has increased to 9.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.
The Mississippi State Department of Health did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Rx Kids comes amid a trend of local municipalities providing similar no-strings-attached cash assistance to households that are eligible — usually low-income families. Hanna told Fox News Digital that there is “bipartisan excitement” to implement a “pro-family, pro-child” program.
“Throughout America, families are struggling with housing affordability. They’re struggling with the impossible cost of childcare. They’re struggling with healthcare access and closing up, for example, rural hospitals. Families are struggling with the price of eggs and the price of gas,” Hanna said.
“Here’s this one simple intervention that’s really short, that’s based on global evidence and domestic evidence, especially from the Expand Child Tax Credit, that is supporting families in a really efficient way.
The affordability crisis has troubled many Americans amid rising costs of groceries, housing, and healthcare. The House passed legislation — showing a rare display of bipartisanship last month with a 390-9 vote — to deliver policies aimed at growing the supply of affordable housing in the U.S.
ILLINOIS GUARANTEED INCOME ADVOCATES PUSH FOR PERMANENT STATEWIDE CASH HANDOUT PROGRAM
Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of over 150 mayors, bids to solve the affordability crisis with cash handouts. The coalition is responsible for over 100 pilot programs launched since 2018 and the establishment of the program in Cook County, Illinois, which was the first municipality to expand a guaranteed income program permanently.
Hanna clarified with Fox News Digital that Rx Kids is not a guaranteed income program nor a universal basic income program.
“I think a lot of states are just interested in doing exactly what Rx Kids is because they know that it’s already built, that it already has proven scale. We are the largest cash transfer of its kind in the country. There’s nothing like us, there’s nothing for whole communities, and they want to go with something that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel with,” she said.
“The work of Rx Kids is built once again on the incredible, robust science of child allowances and that’s when you are giving families with children economic support that has been around for over a century,” Hanna said.
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Revolutionary Tourism: Inside the $600M marriage of dark money and far-left agitprop
Part 4 of a Fox News Digital series investigating the House of Singham explores how the House of Singham mobilizes “The Masses,” a key element in Mao Zedong’s doctrine for a People’s War.
Nearly a decade after Jodie Evans tied the knot with tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham off the waters of Jamaica, the professional activist swept through Havana’s José Martí International Airport last week in sandals and a flowing skirt, wearing a red and white Palestinian kefiyyeh scarf over her shoulders.
Soon after, her friend, wedding guest and fellow activist, Medea Benjamin, joined her as part of the “Nuestra América Convoy” to protest U.S. policy toward Cuba.
It was another day at work for the jet-set professional agitators.
Since 2017, when Evans married Singham in a wedding called “Revolutionary Love” with activist luminaries in attendance, the structure that began forming beneath palm trees has appeared repeatedly at moments of unrest, from Minneapolis to Manhattan, operating through nonprofits, media platforms and activist centers that describe their mission as dismantling “the U.S. empire” from within “the belly of the beast.”
Exclusive photos obtained by Fox News Digital from the Jamaica wedding show the network’s early cast of characters together in one place: Vijay Prashad, a central ideological voice; Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center, whose organizing has intersected with protest movements including those tied to Columbia University; actor Danny Glover and CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and her partner, Tighe Barry. Evans, Singham and their wedding guests didn’t return requests for comment.
At the wedding, sessions and discussions foreshadowed what would follow, aligning activists, messaging and movements across causes and borders. Nearly a decade later, many of those same figures appear across protests, conferences and global campaigns tied to the network.
Over the next years, Glover would join CodePink, protesting U.S. military strikes against Yemen and making a film with director Oliver Stone and a media platform called “Belly of the Beast,” the name many of the wedding guests call the United States.
PRO-CHINA TYCOON FUNNELS MILLIONS TO FUND ANTI-AMERICAN PROTESTS
A Fox News Digital investigation has uncovered how Singham and Evans activated a global network that now numbers an estimated 2,000 hard-left organizations that parrot anti-U.S. propaganda supporting autocratic regimes leading China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Gaza.
Fox News Digital analyzed 223 transactions that moved $591 million in total across five continents from 2017 through 2025, the latest year for which figures are available, and found the money flows through five concentric rings of an ideological pipeline that spreads pro-China propaganda.
The investigation established a documented $278 million that flowed from Singham into organizations that “sow discord” in the U.S., as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it recently at a hearing on foreign malign influence in the nonprofit industry.
Funds also financed about 100 overseas trips that CodePink has facilitated for agitators over the years, with 65 trips to hostile nations, including Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, China and Cuba, returning with talking points that mirror the propaganda of America’s foreign adversaries.
Last week’s sojourn to Havana was just the latest in a dynamic that critics call “revolutionary tourism.”
In the U.S., CodePink activists now parrot foreign talking points at protests that have included celebrities Susan Sarandon and Jane Fonda.
Propaganda scholar Nancy Snow first met Evans in 1992 in Henniker, N.H., when Evans was campaign manager for then-presidential candidate Jerry Brown. Evans had arrived with Brown, who was touting his flat tax proposal at a local town hall. Snow saw her again in the early 2000s in salons hosted by liberal publisher Arianna Huffington for guests to debate ideas.
“Over time, Jodie Evan’s advocacy has moved into a transnational activist ecosystem where anti-American narratives are converging with the strategic messaging of authoritarian states,” Snow told Fox News Digital.
“The Jodie I knew was a progressive anti-war, pro-environment and human rights activist,” recalled Snow. At her home in Venice, Calif., Evans “was charming, cordial and accepting.”
“I never heard any of the militancy and revolutionary rhetoric that she spouts today. She seems to hate America, which is quite the fashion today. Jodie has undoubtedly radicalized over time, fueled by the deep pockets of her Marxist husband, Neville Roy Singham.”
Snow, the author of a book, “Propaganda and Persuasian,” said the tactics of the Singham network apply a specific strategy.
“The most effective propaganda looks like moral activism,” said Snow. “It often arrives disguised as citizen activism. My advice: Follow the money, identify the sponsors.
“Propaganda in the 21st century rarely travels through governments alone. It travels through movements,” said Snow.
Immediately after its launch in 2017, the Singham network operated across continents. It accelerated protest mobilization around geopolitics, including anti-Israel activism and anti-U.S. military actions, and focused on creating a narrative of crisis and resistance.
Different city. Different cause. Same playbook.
From their headquarters on W. 37th Street, Singham’s field marshals in the People’s Forum coordinate protests nationwide that chase the day’s headlines, including: #FreePalestine #FromTheRiverToTheSea protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel, #HandsOffIran after U.S. military strikes in the summer of 2025, #HandsOffVenezuela following the arrest of Nicholas Maduro in January and now #ICEOut, #HandsOffIran and #LetCubaLive.
Many of those field marshals were assembled around a garden nearly a decade ago. What is made to appear spontaneous follows a familiar pattern led by the same people.
RED WEALTH, DARK MONEY: HOW AN AMERICAN TYCOON DEPLOYS MAO’S PLAYBOOK AGAINST THE WEST
“Instead of kinetic action that involves soldiers, guns and bombs, the dynamic of agitation propaganda, or agitprop, as it’s called, was pioneered by the Soviets as a way to destabilize enemies without firing a bullet,” said Snow.
“It’s no coincidence that the U.S. has been rocked by constant agitprop over the past decade after the House of Singham came to fruition,” she said.
Fox News Digital’s investigation has mapped the network of foot soldiers that the House of Signham unleashes on America.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation maintains 68 chapters nationwide and operates 23 Liberation Centers that serve as organizing hubs in major cities. The ANSWER Coalition maintains 13 chapters and so frequently partners with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in coordinated protests that the liberal New Republic calls the ANSWER Coalition its “front group.” Their logos were visible on placards and banners in New York and Minneapolis, even as some national media outlets described demonstrators simply as “angry protesters.”
This network accelerates protest mobilization around geopolitics — anti-Israel campaigns, opposition to U.S. military actions — and focuses on creating a narrative of crisis, chaos and resistance in the U.S., while China crushes dissent and stifles free expression among its citizens.
Most of the Singham network’s funding advanced a singular message: promoting Marxist-Leninist ideology, portraying China as a moral counterweight to the United States and supporting projects aligned with Beijing’s Belt and Road economic vision.
Smith, the House Ways and Means chairman, describes the House of Singham as a “network of non-profit organizations that serve as his conduits to spread pro-CCP narratives” through a fusion of media, research and commercial ventures.
SHANGHAI SABOTAGE: INSIDE SINGHAM’S SECRET STRATEGY TO DEMONIZE AMERICA
In laying out his doctrine for the People’s War, Mao Zedong wrote that “the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea,” weapons are important in war but “it is people, not things, that are decisive.”
His constant mandate was to “mobilize the masses.”
Key to organizing the masses has been CodePink, the organization that Evans and Benjamin, her friend, established in 2008.
Singham’s philanthropy vehicle, GS Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc., pumped $1.3 million into CodePink after Singham’s marriage to Evans. The line item simply said, “General Support.”
Suddenly, the rhetoric on China shifted.
After criticizing China for years for its repression of the ethnic Uyghur Muslim community, Evans made a pivot in August 2020 and hosted a webinar with Prashad and the People’s Forum, invoking the title of a new campaign CodePink launched, “China is Not Our Enemy.”
By early 2021, she was openly praising China’s “extension” of the historical Silk Road. She highlighted China’s modern-day economic growth “under the leadership of the CPC,” the country’s acronym for the Communist Party of China, and she lauded China for building the world’s second-largest economy “without resorting to warfare, colonialism or slavery.”
According to Fox News Digital’s count, the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, Party for Socialism and Liberation and CodePink have organized at least 300 protests over the past decade.
Within minutes of a headline event, the network moves.
There is a call to action by the organizing wing of the Singham circle: People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and CodePink.
Then, the action is amplified by the Singham-funded groups in the propaganda wing: BreakThrough News, People’s Dispatch, Tricontinental Ltd.
A scripted one-hour rally follows with a circular march, followed by days of footage from the protest, building the narrative of an “angry,” “grassroots,” “organic” “resistance” to the latest headline. Media amplification follows, glossing over the protests as socially-engineered.
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, less than four hours after the killing of an anti-ICE agitator Renee Good, by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, at about 10:38 a.m. a signal went out from the People’s Forum Inc., a Singham-funded nonprofit headquartered in an innocuous building off W. 37th Street, between a storefront for a psychic and a dry cleaner.
At 2:35 p.m.. Manolo De Los Santos, the group’s executive director, published a social media post a X, writing, “The cold blooded killing of a woman by ICE in Minneapolis and Trump’s bombing of over 100 people in Venezuela are connected acts of the same brutal machine..
“We must dismantle the U.S. empire, or it will dismantle us.”
Protests followed a regular sequence: public message, rapid protest call, coordinated signage, media amplification.
At 5:11 p.m., the People’s Forum summoned citizens to a 9 a.m. protest the next morning at Foley Square, near ICE offices in lower Manhattan.
By 8:41 a.m. the next morning, David Chung, the director of organizing at the People’s Forum arrived at Foley Square, pushing a shopping cart packed with a speaker,microphone and megaphone, a sticker from the Party for Socialism and Liberation slapped on the side.
Signs were printed. Narratives were set. Talking points were scripted.
A man trailed behind Chung with a pile of freshly-printed black-and-white posters stapled to cardboard tubes and the message, “JUSTICE FOR RENEE GOOD,” with a photo of Good plastered on every poster.
Foot soldiers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the street wing of the People’s Forum, handed the signs out to bystanders as the clock ticked close to 9 a.m.
BreakThrough News broadcast the marchers in closeup and sped-up footage, a tactic designed to signal size and urgency.
The signs included the latest rage-bait messaging, invoking familiar communist tropes about “liberation,” “resistance,” “genocide” and “fascism.” The signs follow a rhetorical script to “free” the “oppressed,” “stand up” to “oppressors,” “shut down” systems and, most lately demand “hands off” the outrage of the day, be it, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba.
Nearly a decade after the Jamaica wedding, the same network that gathered beneath palm trees has grown increasingly visible on streets from Havana to New York and Washington, D.C., fueled by the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by Singham.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation has expanded to organize teen students in walkouts at K-12 schools, protesting ICE operations.
As Benjamin and Evans returned to the United States this week, they geared up for the next action: the “No Kings Rally” on Saturday.
Organized by a wider group of traditionally Democratic organizations, including Indivisible, the far-left Singham network has succeeded in entering the center-left Democratic ecosystem.
The call went out this week. The machine kicked into action for the next anti-America protest.
Evans and Benjamin posted a message on Instagram, telling their followers to “join CodePink” on Saturday: “No War. No Imperialism. No Kings,” The Party for Socialism and Liberation instructed its members to join the “Socialist Contingent” at the protest Saturday.
And the ANSWER Coalition shared a signal for its members to meet them at the Northeast corner of Jackson and Columbus streets in downtown Chicago at 12:30 p.m.
Hannah Brennan contributed to this report.
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Travelers must pay fee, pass screening before visiting popular destination under new rule
A new procedure for all incoming visitors is launching in a popular tourist spot in an effort to streamline the travel process, plus beef up security.
Travelers to Japan will be required to sign up for the Japan Electronic System for Travel Authorization (JESTA) and pay a fee of about $19 (3,000 yen).
Visitors must apply for the “single-entry short-term stay visa for the purpose of tourism for a period of up to 90 days” online prior to their trip, according to a government website.
AMERICANS ON ALERT AS POPULAR TOURIST HOT SPOT NOW ENFORCING DIGITAL IDS AT BORDER
The applications require passport and personal information, travel itinerary and accommodation details.
“It normally takes five working days for Japanese overseas establishment to examine and issue a visa after receipt of a complete application,” the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (JMFA) states.
“Meanwhile, it may take longer during periods of high demand, or if the case requires further clarification,” JMFA adds.
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Applicants can apply up to three months before their trip.
The e-VISA application launched in December.
It will be fully implemented by the end of March 2029, according to local outlets.
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In 2025, 42.7 million international people visited Japan, according to the government’s tourism statistics.
Recently, France, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and 25 other countries began implementing a new Entry/Exit System (EES) — and come April 10, it will be fully enforced.
“These European countries will introduce the different elements of the EES in phases, including the collection of biometric data, such as facial image and fingerprints,” the European Union’s (EU) website notes.
“This means that biometric data (facial image and fingerprints) might not be collected at every border crossing point right away, and personal information may not be registered in the system,” it continued.
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Manual passport stamping is being replaced by automatic digital registration.
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