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Abu Ubaida...Al-Mulatham: Symbol of the Gaza Battle

“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
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Abu Ubaida...Al-Mulatham: Symbol of the Gaza Battle

“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)

The name that many Palestinians keep repeating today is “Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement. The masked man (Al-Mulatham in Arabic) also imposed himself on the Israelis, in the midst of a difficult, complex and fierce battle, which turned him into a hero for many Hamas supporters in the Arab and Western worlds, and a hated enemy for Tel Aviv and its allies.

“Abu Ubaida” has been appearing on screens since Oct. 7, after Mohammad Al-Deif, the commander of Al-Qassam, announced the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

His interventions come once every few days, via a recorded speech, wearing the green camouflage soldiers’ uniform, and wearing a red keffiyeh, to present the position of Al-Qassam and talk about developments in the battle.

Since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, Abu Ubaida has appeared before or after every decisive position, and has managed the media war with remarkable professionalism in the face of the Israeli spokesmen, according to the Palestinian supporters of Hamas.

“Abu Ubaida” was known for the first time in 2002 as one of Al-Qassam’s field officials. He spoke to almost all the media and in press conferences, but never uncovered his face, following the example of the former leader of Al-Qassam, Imad Aqel, who was killed by Israel in 1993.

After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, “Abu Ubaida” was officially appointed spokesman for Al-Qassam.

The man comes from the town of Naalia in Gaza, which Israel occupied in 1948, and now lives in Jabalia, northeast of Gaza, according to the limited information sourced from Israel. His house was bombed several times, in 2008, 2012, 2014, and in the current war in Gaza.

In the 2014 war, he announced the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Shaul Aron in the midst of ground confrontations.

Palestinians at that time took to the streets in the West Bank in spontaneous marches, chanting for him and the “resistance.

“Abu Ubaida” previously had an account on Twitter (currently X), and another on Facebook, before they were closed. Today, he publishes his messages on the official Al-Qassam website and uses the Telegram application and the “Al-Aqsa” channel affiliated with Hamas to broadcast his videos, which are republished by various satellite channels and media outlets.

Israel claims to know the true identity of the Hamas spokesperson. Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said that the masked person, Hudhayfah Kahlout, was hiding behind the keffiyeh, and his nickname was Abu Ubaida.

Adraee published a picture of Kahlout, describing him as a “liar and a coward.” Neither Hamas nor Al-Qassam commented on the information.

Before the 2014 war, Abu Ubaida presented a master’s thesis at the Islamic University from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion, under the title, “The Holy Land between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Today, he is considered the spearhead of the “psychological war against Israel.”

 

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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)

Iran and the United States will hold talks Saturday in Oman, their third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

The talks follow a first round held in Muscat, Oman, where the two sides spoke face to face. They then met again in Rome last weekend before this scheduled meeting again in Muscat.

Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He has repeatedly suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached by writing a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to jumpstart these talks.

Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here’s what to know about the letter, Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 revolution.

Why did Trump write the letter? Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the US could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental US.

How did the first round go? Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, hosted the first round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men met face to face after indirect talks and immediately agreed to this second round in Rome.

Witkoff later made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under US President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America.

Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.” Araghchi and Iranian officials have latched onto Witkoff’s comments in recent days as a sign that America was sending it mixed signals about the negotiations.

Yet the Rome talks ended up with the two sides agreeing to starting expert-level talks this Saturday. Analysts described that as a positive sign, though much likely remains to be agreed before reaching a tentative deal.

Why does Iran’s nuclear program worry the West? Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, has warned in a televised interview that his country has the capability to build nuclear weapons, but it is not pursuing it and has no problem with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections. However, he said if the US or Israel were to attack Iran over the issue, the country would have no choice but to move toward nuclear weapon development.

“If you make a mistake regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, you will force Iran to take that path, because it must defend itself,” he said.

Why are relations so bad between Iran and the US? Iran was once one of the US’s top allies in the Middle East under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The revolution followed, led by Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the US back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the US launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the US later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the American military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that persist today.