According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the current Gaza cease-fire agreement may be the last chance to secure the return of hostages and put an end to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. “This is a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken told CNN on Monday. Blinken met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday and was expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later that day. This is his eighth trip to the region since the conflict began on October 7. Negotiators from the United States, Egypt, and Qatar gathered in Doha, Qatar, last week to draft the most recent version of agreement

The country’s leadership “might seek to create social instability through violence, propaganda and agitation at the early stages of a conflict.” Pyongyang has long criticized the partners’ combined exercises as a rehearsal for an assault against it. Washington and Seoul, for its part, have denied the claim, calling their drills “defensive in nature.”