Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Renews Strikes Against Iran In Retaliation For Strikes Against Tankers

• French Presidential Candidate Re-Enters Presidential Race Following New Court Order

• Prominent British MP Resigns Due To Financial Misuse Allegations

U.S. Renews Strikes Against Iran In Retaliation For Strikes Against Tankers

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Mark Schiefelbein - AP)

_{By: Atlas}

The U.S. military began firing on Iran early Wednesday, hours after three commercial ships were struck in the Strait of Hormuz, shattering more than a week of relative calm and putting the interim deal to end the war back in doubt. Central Command called the strikes "powerful" and cast them as payback for attacks on civilian shipping. Explosions were heard across southern Iran within the hour.

The move came the same day Washington scrapped a sanctions waiver that had let Iran sell its oil, a one-two punch that ratcheted pressure on Tehran even as negotiators kept insisting a final settlement was still within reach. Oil prices climbed more than two percent.

The Strikes

Central Command announced the operation on X, saying its forces had begun "a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway." The strikes, it said, answered Iranian attacks on three vessels in the strait. "Iran's demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire," the command added.

What exactly the Americans hit was not immediately clear. Iranian media reported explosions on the island of Qeshm and seven blasts in the city of Sirik, with more heard at the port of Bandar Abbas. State outlets said six projectiles struck the area of the Taheroui pier in Sirik. No casualties were reported on either side in the initial hours.

This was the first known U.S. strike on Iran since late last month, when a similar round of Iranian attacks on shipping drew American retaliation and a matching Iranian response before both sides agreed to stand down. The pattern repeated itself almost exactly.

What Set It Off

The trigger was a cluster of attacks on tankers moving through the strait Monday and Tuesday. Britain's Maritime Trade Operations center said an unknown projectile hit a tanker overnight, sparking a fire in an engine room off the coast of Oman. Two more ships were struck Tuesday, one as it exited the strait near the Omani-Emirati border, another by a drone. All three continued on their way. The U.N. International Maritime Organization called it the most attacks in the waterway in a single day since late April.

Two Gulf states named their ships and pointed the finger squarely at Tehran. Qatar said its liquefied natural gas tanker Al-Rekayyat was hit in what its foreign ministry spokesman, Majed Al-Ansari, called an "unacceptable attack" and a "serious and explicit violation" of international law. Doha summoned Iran's deputy ambassador, demanded an explanation, and said it held Iran "fully legally responsible." Saudi Arabia said its tanker Wadyan was also targeted, calling the assaults an attack on the safety of international navigation and global energy supplies.

Iran did not claim the strikes on the ships. Its foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, addressed only Qatar's accusation, calling it contrary to good neighborliness and warning that vessels using routes not coordinated with Tehran, or tampering with their tracking, risk collision. Iran voiced "dismay" at Doha's claims through its state news agency.

A Fight Over the Waterway

Underneath the exchange lies a dispute over who controls the strait, the channel that carried about a fifth of the world's oil and gas in peacetime. All three tankers were hit close to Oman, which had proposed a transit corridor hugging its southern coastline. Iran opposes that route. It has repeatedly declared that only its own approved passage to the north is safe, and it wants ships to register with Tehran and eventually pay fees, a break with decades of free navigation.

The Joint Maritime Information Center, overseen by the U.S. Navy, told shippers Monday that the Oman route "has been expanded and remains available for all traffic." Ships heading north work with Iran; those heading south work with Oman and the United States. The data firm Kpler counted at least 108 crossings over the weekend using various routes. Andreas Krieg, a security analyst at King's College London, said Iran was sending a clear signal that no alternative to its own toll system would be tolerated, and that tankers diverging through the Omani corridor without registering would be punished.

Washington and its Gulf partners have said flatly they will not accept Iran charging for passage. Under the 14-point memorandum signed last month, Iran and Oman are supposed to hold talks with other Gulf states to define how the waterway is administered.

The Deal Under Strain

The strikes landed on an agreement that has survived several skirmishes but keeps getting tested. The memorandum of understanding reached in June halted fighting on all fronts, reopened the strait, barred Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, and set up a $300 billion reconstruction fund, one the United States is not obligated to finance. Both sides gave themselves 60 days to reach a permanent deal.

Hours before the strikes, the Treasury Department canceled the license that had authorized Iran to produce, sell, and deliver oil through late August, allowing a wind-down period until July 17. U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil have stood since the 1979 revolution, and the waiver had been extended at least twice as an incentive during the talks. A U.S. official, speaking anonymously, said Iran's conduct in the strait was unacceptable and would carry consequences, but insisted negotiators were still working "in good faith" toward a final deal, describing the memorandum as "entirely performance-based."

Tehran read both moves as breaches. Its foreign ministry said revoking the license violated the interim deal and that "the U.S. government bears responsibility for the consequences." Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi called the new strikes a violation as well.

The timing sharpened the moment. President Trump was in Turkey for the NATO summit, where he met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while talks with Iran appeared frozen until after the burial of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed on the war's first day, February 28. His body reached Najaf, Iraq, late Tuesday, with processions planned in Najaf and Karbala before burial Thursday in Mashhad. His son and successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, believed wounded in the strike that killed his father, has still not appeared at the funeral. For now, the war that the memorandum was meant to wind down is once again live, its ceasefire holding by a thread and the strait still contested.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• SCOTUS Affirms Birthright Citizenship in 5-4 Decision

• U.K. Tacks On Additional $20 Billion Dollars For Defense Spending

• U.S. Envoys For Iran Peace Deal Arrive In Qatar

SCOTUS Affirms Birthright Citizenship in 5-4 Decision

President Trump on the night of his 2nd inaguration (AFP via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, upholding the long-settled reading of the 14th Amendment that makes a citizen of nearly everyone born on American soil. The 6-3 decision, the final ruling of the term, was the most consequential of Trump's immigration defeats at the high court and closed the door on an executive order he signed his first day back in office.

The case, Trump v. Barbara, turned on a single clause written into the Constitution after the Civil War. The court held that children born in the United States to parents here illegally or on temporary visas are citizens the moment they are born. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined in full by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal justices, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh supplying a sixth vote on separate grounds.

What the Court Decided

Roberts anchored the ruling in text, history, and a case the court decided more than a century ago. The Citizenship Clause, he wrote, grants citizenship to anyone born in the country and subject to its laws, with narrow exceptions long recognized for the children of foreign diplomats and members of an invading army. Children of parents unlawfully or temporarily in the country, he concluded, satisfy both elements of the clause and are citizens at birth.

The chief justice traced the principle back to English common law, which held that those born on British soil became subjects, a rule he said crossed the Atlantic with the colonists and survived the Revolution. The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 to repudiate the Dred Scott decision, was meant to enshrine that understanding permanently. The court reaffirmed it in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruling that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen despite his parents' status.

Roberts rejected the administration's central argument, that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" requires a permanent allegiance the children of noncitizens cannot show. There was scant evidence, he wrote, for what he called a dramatically revisionist reading, and nothing in the clause's language limited citizenship to the children of those with a permanent home in the country. "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights," he wrote, adding that the amendment's framers extended that promise to every free-born person in the land and that the court was keeping it.

A Splintered Majority

Though six justices agreed the order could not stand, they did not all agree on why, leaving the constitutional holding resting on a bare majority of five.

Kavanaugh broke from the others on the reasoning. He would not have found the order unconstitutional, concluding instead that it violated a federal statute Congress wrote in 1952 conferring citizenship on those born in the country and subject to its jurisdiction. A president, he wrote, cannot override that law by executive order, though he suggested Congress could amend it to carve out exceptions. That distinction matters. Because the majority grounded its decision in the Constitution, undoing it would require a constitutional amendment rather than an act of Congress, a far steeper path.

The split drew a pointed rejoinder from within the court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of two Black justices, criticized the dissent's reading as narrow, writing that the Reconstruction amendments were an anticaste reset for the nation, not a limited fix for slavery, and faulting the effort to set Black Americans against immigrants.

The Dissents

Justice Clarence Thomas led the opposition with a 91-page dissent, more than three times the length of the majority opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He accused the majority of relying on an alternative history of the amendment and argued that its authors, including the architect of the provision, Representative John Bingham, understood it to exclude the children of temporary visitors. Citizenship, Thomas wrote, was meant for permanent members of the body politic, those domiciled in the country and rooted in it. He warned that the ruling devalued citizenship and predicted it might not stand the test of time.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote separately, calling the decision one of the most important in the court's history and, in his judgment, a serious mistake that would affect the country's future. He raised a national security concern, describing a hypothetical child who grows up abroad, never sets foot in the country, and is taught to hate it, yet holds a citizenship that cannot be revoked. Gorsuch added a brief dissent of his own questioning where the parents of children born here could be considered domiciled if not in the United States.

Reaction and What Comes Next

Trump denounced the outcome on Truth Social, calling it too bad for the country and, in a separate post, a win for China, a reference to his administration's repeated targeting of birth tourism. He urged Congress to act immediately, insisting no constitutional amendment was necessary, a claim most legal scholars dispute given that the ruling rests on the Constitution itself.

Republican lawmakers signaled they would press on through other channels. Senator Rand Paul revived a constitutional amendment he had introduced in April, urging voters to call their senators, and Senator Mike Lee said the long fight for an amendment was beginning. Representative Chip Roy floated legislation to withhold federal funding from agencies or states that take an expansive view of the right. Governor Ron DeSantis, a former attorney, called the decision a substantive defeat that would require an amendment or a future court to overturn.

Civil liberties groups welcomed the ruling. Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union's national legal director who argued the case, said the decision reaffirmed a fundamental promise that those born in the country are citizens, and that no president can change the Constitution by fiat. Norman Wong, the great-grandson of Wong Kim Ark, said the ruling showed his ancestor's victory remained as important now as in 1898.

The order Trump signed would have affected a substantial number of families. Estimates placed the number of children born each year who could have been denied citizenship at roughly 250,000 to 260,000, a figure that includes both children of illegal immigrants and, in smaller numbers, those born to parents on temporary legal status. The order was blocked in the lower courts and never took effect anywhere in the country. With the decision, the justices closed out their term and left the 150-year-old understanding of American citizenship intact.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Senate Votes With House In Favor Of Pausing Military Action Against Iran

• U.S. Presses More Sanctions On Cuba’s Economy

• E.U. Officials Hold First Time Meeting With Taliban Over Deportations

Senate Votes With House In Favor Of Pausing Military Action Against Iran

President Donald Trump on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (Shawn Thew - EPA - Bloomberg via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The Senate voted Tuesday to direct President Donald Trump to halt U.S. military operations against Iran, marking the first time both chambers of Congress have approved a war powers resolution since the 1973 statute that created the mechanism.

The 50-48 vote came on the tenth Senate attempt to constrain the campaign Trump launched on February 28, and it succeeded only because two Republicans who would have opposed the measure missed the vote.

The Tally

Four Republicans crossed party lines to support the resolution: Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky. The same four had backed earlier versions of the measure.

One Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against it. Fetterman has been among his party's more hawkish voices on the conflict.

Two Republicans were absent. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was hospitalized this month for an undisclosed condition, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania was traveling with Trump for a factory visit and economic remarks in his home state. Their absence left the GOP short of the numbers needed to defeat the resolution.

Majority Leader John Thune said the outcome turned on those absences, noting that without the attendance issues Republicans would have blocked the measure. He argued the vote sent the wrong signal while the administration negotiates with Tehran.

The House cleared the identical resolution on June 3 by a vote of 215-208. Four Republicans in that chamber — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Warren Davidson of Ohio — joined Democrats.

A Disputed Legal Effect

The measure is a concurrent resolution, a form that does not go to the president's desk for signature or veto. That structure is the source of an unresolved dispute over whether the vote carries any force.

Supporters point to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which Congress designed to let lawmakers end military operations through this kind of measure. Gregory Meeks of New York, who sponsored the resolution in the House, said he considers it binding and would pursue all legal avenues to compel compliance.

The White House rejected that reading. An administration official said the vote carried no significance because the resolution does not reach the president and because hostilities had already ended with a ceasefire on April 7. The administration has long maintained that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional.

The question is complicated by a 1983 Supreme Court ruling holding that measures meant to override executive action must be presented to the president for signature or veto. No war powers resolution had previously passed both chambers, leaving the issue untested. Legal analysts expect the courts to settle it, while noting it is unclear who would have standing to sue.

The Deal Behind the Vote

Discontent over the agreement Trump struck to end the war drove much of the vote. The president signed a memorandum of understanding last week that started a 60-day clock for a broader accord on Iran's nuclear program.

Several Republicans objected to the terms, particularly a proposed $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran, financed by Gulf Arab states. By comparison, the 2015 nuclear agreement returned roughly $1.7 billion to Tehran. Defense hawks including Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi questioned both the fund and provisions that would allow Iran to enrich uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

Ted Cruz of Texas said last week that Trump was getting very poor advice on Iran.

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Switzerland over the weekend to lead talks with Iranian officials. Vance and Trump have said Iran agreed to admit nuclear inspectors; Tehran has denied making that concession. The two sides have also disagreed publicly over Iran's claimed right to enrich uranium.

Some Republicans argued the vote itself could undermine the talks. James Risch of Idaho warned that passage might prompt Iran to walk away from negotiations.

Cost, Polling and Next Steps

The war has proven unpopular. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that about one in four Americans believed the conflict had been worth its cost.

The financial toll has fed that sentiment. The Pentagon estimated the first week of fighting cost $11.3 billion, and lawmakers cited expert estimates placing the total near $100 billion for the operation, designated Operation Epic Fury. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill seeking roughly $80 billion in supplemental funding to replenish depleted munitions and stockpiles.

That request sits within a larger push. The administration is seeking about $1.5 trillion in defense funding this year, a nearly 50 percent increase, including $350 billion it wants moved through budget reconciliation.

Democrats framed the vote as a constitutional matter. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has led the party's war powers efforts, said the pause in fighting offered an opening for Congress to weigh the next phase rather than leaving the decision to one man. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would keep forcing such votes.

Trump is scheduled to address Senate Republicans at their lunch Wednesday, where he is expected to press skeptics on the agreement. He has said critics, including allies, need to be educated on the deal. He has also warned that he could strike Iran again if Tehran does not rein in its proxies in Lebanon, where Israeli operations have continued despite the ceasefire.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Iran Attacks U.S. Bases In Kuwait

• Trump Names Bill Pulte As Acting D.N.I.

• Cambodia Takes Thailand To U.N. Court Over Maritime Dispute

Iran Attacks U.S. Bases In Kuwait

Iran test firing its home-built surface-to-surface Fateh 110 missile (Corbis via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Iranian forces launched at least five ballistic missiles toward American military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain on Tuesday evening, drawing immediate retaliatory strikes from the United States on a missile facility on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and pushing what remains of a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran closer to collapse.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that two Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in flight, and that three missiles fired at Bahrain were intercepted by a combination of American and Bahraini air defense systems. No U.S. personnel were harmed, and no American assets were damaged. Iranian state media reported that three missiles struck "enemy bases" inside Kuwait, a claim CENTCOM directly disputed.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its missiles had targeted Camp Arifjan and the Ali Al Salem Air Base, two large American installations in Kuwait that host U.S. Army Central forces. A separate IRGC statement said the strikes had also targeted the U.S. Fifth Fleet's headquarters in Bahrain. The Guards' statement framed the attack as an "initial response" to American military activity, warning that future U.S. strikes would prompt a "harsher" Iranian response.

The Kuwaiti Response

Kuwait's military said its air defense systems engaged the incoming missile and drone threats almost immediately. Sirens sounded across multiple parts of the country, with at least two separate waves of warnings throughout the night, and residents reported audible explosions as interceptors engaged.

"Any sounds of explosions heard are the result of air defense systems intercepting these hostile attacks," the Kuwaiti military said in a statement on X. The country's foreign ministry separately held Iran "fully responsible for these heinous attacks" and called the latest round of strikes a "serious escalation," using language stronger than at any prior point in the conflict.

Kuwait has been on the receiving end of repeated Iranian strikes since late February, when the United States and Israel launched the opening salvos of Operation Epic Fury against Iranian nuclear and military targets. The country's main civilian airport, Kuwait International, had only resumed phased operations at Terminal 1 on June 1 after extended repairs and upgrades following an earlier Iranian missile attack. Tuesday night's missile launches were the second time Iran had attempted to strike American forces in Kuwait in roughly 48 hours.

The U.S. Counter-Strike

CENTCOM said the American military launched what it described as "self-defense strikes" on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz in response to the Iranian attacks. The U.S. struck a military ground-control station on the island, the same heavily fortified Iranian military complex that has been the target of repeated American strikes over the past week. Qeshm Island, off the southern Iranian coast, houses what the IRGC has long described as one of its principal "missile cities."

Earlier the same day, CENTCOM said American forces had also shot down three Iranian one-way attack drones that had been launched toward civilian shipping in the surrounding waters. The drones were described as targeting "civilian mariners" and were intercepted "moments earlier" than the strike on Qeshm Island.

The American action was the latest in a back-and-forth sequence of strikes and counter-strikes that has accelerated over the past several days. On Monday, U.S. and Iranian forces had already exchanged what each side characterized as "self-defense" operations: CENTCOM struck what it described as Iranian drone "radar and command and control sites," and Iran retaliated by destroying an American drone and ordering a separate drone attack on a U.S. base in Kuwait. The latest exchanges follow earlier American strikes on Bandar Abbas, Iran's principal naval port, last week after the IRGC was accused of laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Maritime Front

The strikes came against the backdrop of an intensifying American maritime blockade of Iran. CENTCOM said separately on Tuesday that U.S. forces had disabled a Botswana-flagged oil tanker, the M/T Lexie, after the vessel ignored repeated warnings over a 24-hour period while attempting to transit toward Kharg Island, Iran's primary oil export terminal. A U.S. aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into the tanker's engine room, halting the vessel. The Lexie was not carrying cargo at the time.

The action made the Lexie the seventh commercial ship disabled by U.S. forces since the maritime blockade began on April 13. CENTCOM said an additional 122 vessels had been redirected during the same period. The blockade has effectively choked off seaborne traffic into Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz, with the IRGC reporting that only 24 vessels transited the strait in the past 24 hours, all under permits issued by the Guards' navy.

Talks in Stalemate

The escalation has unfolded as negotiations between Washington and Tehran appeared to drift back into uncertainty. Iranian state-aligned media reported Tuesday that Tehran had not communicated with American mediators for "a few days" and was reviewing the latest U.S. proposal under a "stern" posture, citing what it described as a history of American non-compliance. The Fars news agency said the last Iranian message to U.S. interlocutors concerned Lebanon, where Iran has insisted that a halt to Israeli operations against Hezbollah be folded into the broader truce.

President Donald Trump rejected the characterization. "The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today," he posted on Truth Social. He also issued a sharper public warning to the Iranian leadership: "It's time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You've been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday and outlined two principal U.S. demands: the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without tolls, and a separate negotiation on the disposition of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. "They have to announce, very clearly, the straits are now open, we're not charging a toll, we'll help remove the mines that they put in there, and they will not fire on ships," Rubio said. He added that Iran had "agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program" that it had previously refused to discuss, but said no agreement was guaranteed.

The IRGC's framing of Tuesday's missile launches as merely an "initial response" suggested that the Iranian leadership, for now, sees no political cost in continued escalation along the U.S. periphery in the Gulf.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.N. Leader Visits Haiti To Confront Gang Crisis

• Supreme Court Blocks Challenge To China Tariffs

• U.S. Senate Blocks War Powers Restriction On Trump

U.N. Leader Visits Haiti To Confront Gang Crisis

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the diplomatic lounge in Port-au-Prince on July 1, 2023 (Odelyn Joseph - AP)

_{By: Atlas}

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres made a one-day visit to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, his first to the Haitian capital since July 2023, as gang violence has driven displacement to record highs and a new international force prepares to take the fight to the armed groups.

The trip, described by his office as a solidarity visit, unfolded against grim figures. The United Nations says 2,300 people have been killed across Haiti so far this year, with 1,100 injured and 99 kidnapped, and roughly 1.5 million displaced nationwide, more than one in ten residents of a country of nearly 12 million. Among those recently abducted is James Boyard, cabinet director of the Defense Ministry, seized last week in one of the few relatively secure areas of the capital.

The violence has not let up. More than 30 people were killed, injured, or reported missing last weekend in Cité Soleil, a seaside slum, according to a local human rights group. Guterres arrived by helicopter from the Dominican Republic, his convoy passing neighborhoods hollowed out by fighting, concrete buildings pocked with bullet holes, and families sheltering under canvas strung up with frayed rope. More than 300,000 people have been displaced across Port-au-Prince, a record, including over 18,000 who fled Cité Soleil in May.

A new force takes shape

Guterres's first stop was the base of the Gang Suppression Force, the international effort the U.N. Security Council approved in September to replace a Kenyan-led mission that had been chronically underfunded and undermanned. So far, troops from Chad, Jamaica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, by some accounts, Mongolia have deployed, numbering fewer than 1,000, with operations expected to begin in the coming weeks. The mandate allows the force to grow to roughly 5,500 personnel, drawn mostly from military and police ranks.

At Camp Vertières, in the east of the capital, the most recent contingent of Chadian soldiers is housed in a base still being equipped, with offices set up in shipping containers. The force is to work alongside Haiti's National Police and its growing army, and hundreds of Haitian men and a handful of women have lined up hoping to enlist. The U.N. has set up a separate support office to supply rations, medical care, and transportation.

Guterres framed the deployment as a rare opening. "Their deployment offers a real opportunity to curb violence and restore the authority of the State," he told reporters. "We have no right to waste this opportunity." He stressed that force alone would not be enough, saying gangs must be "disarmed and dismantled and their members reintegrated" through a Haitian-led process accompanied by political progress. The force's commander, Jack Christofides, told the Security Council in April that the goal was to degrade the gangs' capacity to a level Haitian institutions could manage on their own.

Politics and the push for elections

After touring the base, Guterres met behind closed doors with Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who is under pressure to organize elections in a country that has had no president since Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home in July 2021 and no vote since 2016.

Fils-Aimé took office after the mandate of an interim presidential council expired in February. That council had been created in early 2024, when a surge of gang violence forced the country's unelected prime minister to step down. "We had a frank conversation about what's happening in Haiti, the vision the government has for the future," Fils-Aimé said afterward, calling security the priority that would allow the transitional government to hold elections and return to constitutional rule. He said Guterres could help by ensuring the nations backing the suppression force follow through on their commitments.

Inside the shelters

Guterres also visited a former school turned shelter housing more than 1,200 people, some of whom have lived there for as long as four years after gangs burned them out of their neighborhoods. In a sweltering, tin-roofed room, he met privately with a group of women who described conditions with no privacy to bathe or use the bathroom, dozens of families packed together, and a single guaranteed meal each day. One described the crowding as skin-to-skin.

"I ask your forgiveness for not having been able to mobilize the international community," Guterres told them. "We know how much you have suffered and I am here to listen to you." Residents pressed him on when they might go home. A 31-year-old man said his community of Solino, one of the capital's last holdouts before gangs overran it, was not ready for returns. Another resident, who has lived at the school for a year and a half, said the families wanted to return to their neighborhoods because, as he put it, they had no life where they were. As Guterres left, a man pounded the building's metal siding and shouted to go home.

An aid gap and rights concerns

The humanitarian picture remains dire. Nearly 1.5 million Haitians are displaced and more than 5 million face severe food insecurity, yet the U.N.'s $880 million aid plan for 2026 is less than a quarter funded as hurricane season begins. A report from the U.N. human rights office found that gang-related violence claimed more than 5,500 lives between March 2025 and mid-January 2026, with nearly 3,500 of those deaths occurring during anti-gang operations, a category that included both alleged gang members and civilians.

The day before the visit, Human Rights Watch urged Guterres in an open letter to push for a response broader than security operations alone, calling for a full-fledged U.N. mission. The group warned that criminal groups had spread into Haiti's South-East department and were now active in five of the country's ten regions, with children estimated to make up half their membership. It also flagged abuses tied to the crackdown, including summary killings by police and drone strikes by security forces and private contractors that it said had killed or injured more than 1,200 people, among them 17 children, and pressed for safeguards on the new force's use of force and stronger accountability.

Guterres struck a cautiously hopeful note as he closed the visit, pointing to what he called the first light at the end of the tunnel in years while warning that the chance would hold only if other governments stepped up. "The biggest disgrace is indifference," he said, "the indifference of a world that has looked away."

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Strikes Iran After Downing Of U.S. Helicopter

• Zelensky Attends Nordic-Baltic Summit

• U.S. House Passes Legislation To Fund I.C.E. & Border Patrol For 3 Years

U.S. Strikes Iran After Downing Of U.S. Helicopter

_{By: Atlas}

The U.S. military struck Iran on Tuesday evening, hitting air defenses and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz a day after Iranian forces brought down an Army Apache helicopter over the same waters.

Central Command said the operation began at 5 p.m. Eastern at President Donald Trump's direction and called it a "proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression." By late Tuesday the command said the strikes were complete, reporting that Air Force and Navy fighter jets had hit Iranian air defense systems, ground control stations, and surveillance radar near the strait with precision munitions.

Iranian state media described large explosions along the country's southern coast, near the cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik and the island of Qeshm, and said the situation afterward was calm. No damage to U.S. assets was immediately reported.

Trump framed the response as deliberate and limited. "This is a response to what they did with our helicopter last night, and I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that's what this one is," he told an ABC reporter by phone. House Speaker Mike Johnson described the operation as "proportional and limited," tying it to what he called Iranian attacks on U.S. assets and personnel.

The Apache and a first-of-its-kind rescue

The strikes answered the loss of an AH-64 Apache that went down Monday evening while patrolling near Oman's coast and the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the military first logged the incident as a crash before an investigation concluded Iran had shot the aircraft down. A U.S. official said a one-way Iranian attack drone brought it down.

Both crew members survived without injuries and were listed in stable condition. Their rescue was itself a milestone. The two soldiers were pulled from the water about two hours after the helicopter went down by a Corsair unmanned surface vessel, a Navy drone boat, in what officials called the first operation of its kind. The crew was then moved to another point on the water and hoisted into a helicopter for further care.

The Corsair is built by Saronic Technologies of Austin, runs 24 feet long, and carries up to 1,000 pounds. The Navy first fielded the vessels in the region in March and awarded Saronic a $392 million contract for them late last year. The unit behind the rescue, Task Force 59, specializes in maritime drones.

The Apache was the latest in a long line of U.S. aircraft lost in the conflict. A congressional report last month counted at least 42 aircraft destroyed or damaged, among them an F-15E shot down in early April, whose crew was recovered, and an Air Force refueling plane that crashed in Iraq, killing six service members.

Tehran promises to hit back

Iran signaled quickly that it would answer. The Revolutionary Guard warned of a heavy response and said it could strike U.S. bases in the region, naming the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. An IRGC-linked outlet claimed Iran had already launched missiles and drones at American targets.

By early Wednesday, the Guard said it had carried out that threat, announcing a drone strike on the Bahraini Fifth Fleet and warning of "heavier responses" if the attacks continued. It said the U.S. operation had damaged a telecommunications mast in Sirik and destroyed two water tanks.

Iran's account of the helicopter itself was less certain than Washington's. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States had chosen to "test our determination" and vowed that Iran's forces would leave no attack unanswered, but he also suggested the downing might have been an accident, writing that foreign forces near Iranian territory face constant risk from "human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire." A deputy foreign minister told Al Jazeera that Tehran had not "deliberately" shot down the aircraft. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was blunter, telling Trump that Iran preferred diplomacy but spoke "other languages far more fluently."

A ceasefire stretched to its limit

The exchange put fresh strain on a truce that has been fraying for weeks. The ceasefire, first declared in early April, remains technically in force but has survived a string of attacks from both sides, including a weekend of missile fire between Israel and Iran that each halted only after the fact.

The fighting traces back to the war that began in late February, an effort the administration named Operation Epic Fury. Iran initially shut the Strait of Hormuz, a passage central to global energy supplies, and the United States answered with a blockade of Iranian ports that remains in place. Central Command has said Iran has launched more than 300 attacks on a dozen countries since the war began.

Lebanon stayed hot through the day as well. Israel ordered residents of the southern city of Tyre to evacuate and then struck the area, killing at least eight people, according to Lebanese authorities, as it pressed its campaign against Hezbollah.

Mixed signals on a deal

Even as he ordered the strikes, Trump worked to keep the door open to negotiations, and at times to play down the very attack he was responding to. He told the Wall Street Journal the helicopter incident "wasn't a big deal" and said the pilots were fine, adding that the facts were "much different" than what the public knew.

He has insisted for weeks that an agreement is near, saying Tuesday the two sides were in the "final throes" of a deal that would bar Iran from nuclear weapons and reopen the strait. He also warned of the cost of a wider war, noting that sustained bombing could leave Iran with little but would keep the strait closed for months.

The pressure to settle is partly domestic. Gas prices stood at $4.16 a gallon on Tuesday, down from a month earlier but still well above prewar levels, and some Republicans have pushed for a harder line. Sen. Ted Cruz said "enough is enough" after the Apache was lost, while others voiced growing impatience with talks that keep being described as nearly done. Whether Tuesday's strikes prove to be the limited reprisal Washington described, or the first move in a return to open war, was the question left hanging as Iran promised more to come.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Different Narratives Collide On U.S. Arms Package For Taiwan

• North Korea Gives Update On New Purported Warhead Technology

• ‘Quad Ministers’ Unveil New Agreements For Maritime Security & Energy

Different Narratives Collide On U.S. Arms Package For Taiwan

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo Li-hsiung (Taiwan Defense Ministry)

_{By: Atlas}

Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo Li-hsiung said Monday that he remained "cautiously optimistic" the United States would move forward with a pending $14 billion arms package for the island, even as contradictory signals from Washington over the past week have raised questions about whether the sale is on hold.

The framework for the package was advanced earlier this year and would include advanced missiles, anti-drone systems, and surveillance equipment, layered on top of an $11 billion deal the Trump administration approved in December — the largest single weapons package to Taiwan in U.S. history.

But the status of the second tranche has become a moving target. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on Thursday that the Pentagon was "doing a pause" on certain foreign military sales to make sure "we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury," the official name for the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. President Donald Trump, by contrast, has publicly framed the same package as a "negotiating chip" with Beijing, telling Fox News last week that he had not decided whether to approve the sale and that the matter "depends on China."

The two explanations contradict each other on the central question of why deliveries are not moving. They have also created friction inside the administration's own narrative on munitions readiness, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted is not strained. "The munitions issue has been foolishly and unhelpfully overstated," Hegseth told House appropriators last week. "We know exactly what we have. We have plenty of what we need."

Koo's Response From Taipei

Speaking to reporters Monday, Koo said Taipei had received no formal notification of any change in U.S. policy toward the island and that ministry-level contacts with the Pentagon — which the Trump administration recently rebranded as the "War Department" — were continuing.

"From the Defense Ministry's standpoint, we continue to maintain communication with the U.S. War Department," Koo said. "The reason we remain cautiously optimistic is because we believe that under unchanged U.S. policy towards Taiwan, the core interest involved here is peace in the Taiwan Strait, and peace in the Taiwan Strait is a core interest of the United States."

Cao's testimony last week also acknowledged that the Pentagon had not discussed the pause with Taipei, an omission that Taiwanese officials have privately said is more concerning than the substance of the delay itself. Taiwan's presidential office issued a similar statement on Friday, saying it had not been notified of any adjustment to the arms package and that arms purchases remained on track.

Peter Mattis, president of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said in Taipei this week that Trump's remarks during his Beijing visit and the subsequent Fox News interview "didn't really change anything" the United States has said about Taiwan's right to choose its own future. Mattis said the comments about the arms package as a "bargaining chip" did not, in his reading, signal a willingness to trade Taiwan's security for Chinese concessions.

Trump's "Negotiating Chip" and the Munitions Question

The contradiction between the White House and the Navy Department has reignited a Capitol Hill debate over both the state of U.S. munitions stockpiles and the strategic logic of conditioning Taiwan's defense on the trajectory of U.S.-China negotiations.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader, called the delay "distressing" during Thursday's hearing. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana pressed the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, on the same question. "What more do we have to know, admiral?" Kennedy asked. "President Xi has telegraphed his anxiety, his insecurity. We want leverage, we want stability, not a war. Why don't we just go ahead and sell the weapons to Taiwan that Taiwan wants?"

Caudle declined to second-guess the administration but said the United States "definitely want[s] Taiwan to be as strong as they can be." Foreign military sales decisions, he added, "are very complex" and required "a full calculus of all the levers of power that are being negotiated and worked."

The munitions explanation is grounded in real expenditures. The United States has burned through thousands of missiles since the war with Iran began on February 28, including the bulk of its inventory of long-range stealth cruise missiles, large numbers of Tomahawks, Patriot interceptors, and Precision Strike Missiles. Deliveries of roughly 400 Tomahawks to Japan have also been deferred, and a separate arms sale to South Korea has been delayed, although Seoul has not publicly commented. Congress is expecting a supplemental White House funding request of between $80 billion and $100 billion to fund the war and backfill the stockpiles.

Taiwan's Own Funding Shortfall and Chinese Military Pressure

The pause arrives at a politically awkward moment for Taipei. Earlier this month, Taiwan's opposition-controlled parliament approved only two-thirds of a $40 billion special defense budget that President Lai Ching-te had requested. The version that passed funds the U.S. arms purchases but cuts domestic programs, including drones — a category the United States has identified as essential to deterring a Chinese cross-strait operation.

A senior U.S. official described the administration as "disappointed" with the size of the approved package. A senior Taiwanese security official said the bigger concern in Taipei was that Beijing could use the reduced figure as leverage in any future conversation with Trump, "arguing that Taiwan's legislature opposes buying weapons and that the U.S. should respect the will of the Taiwanese people — in order to persuade President Trump to halt or reduce defense support for Taiwan."

China's military response has continued in parallel. Taiwan's Defense Ministry on Tuesday tracked 29 Chinese aircraft and seven warships around the island, with 24 sorties crossing the unofficial median line in the Taiwan Strait. Joseph Wu, the secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, said it was the second "joint combat readiness patrol" in a week and that the Liaoning aircraft carrier group had been spotted in the Western Pacific. Wu said Beijing had deployed more than 100 vessels along the first island chain, which runs from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines.

The Six Assurances Question

Beyond the immediate package, Trump's public posture has revived debate about the Six Assurances, the 1982 commitments the Reagan administration made to Taipei, one of which states that Washington will not consult Beijing before approving arms sales to Taiwan. Trump told reporters after his Beijing visit that the $14 billion sale had been discussed with Xi "in great detail." Critics, including U.S. defense hawks and Taiwanese commentators, have said the remark and the broader "bargaining chip" framing depart from that decades-old pledge.

The White House has not formally renounced any of the Six Assurances, and senior administration officials have continued to describe U.S. policy as unchanged. Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute said Beijing was likely to try to condition Xi's planned September visit to Washington — and Hegseth's reported July trip to Beijing — on the U.S. either holding back the $14 billion package or significantly shrinking it.

Lai, who continues to reject Beijing's sovereignty claims, told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit last week that the island is a "sovereign, independent nation" and would not bow to pressure. His spokesperson Karen Kuo said over the weekend that U.S. arms sales serve as "reciprocal deterrence against regional threats" and reflect Washington's obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Putin Marks 25th Trip To China For Extensive Foreign Relations & Trade Talks

• U.S. Suspends Joint Defense Board With Canada

• Bolivia Faces Nationwide Protests

Putin Marks 25th Trip To China For Extensive Foreign Relations & Trade Talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, Oct 22, 2024. (Kristina Kormilits - Brics 2024)

_{By: Atlas}

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday evening for a two-day state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his 25th trip to China as president and the latest in a string of meetings designed to keep the partnership between Moscow and Beijing firmly on display.

Putin's plane was met on the tarmac by Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a military honor guard. Chinese youths in light blue shirts waved Russian and Chinese flags and chanted "Welcome, welcome, warm welcome!" as Wang walked Putin to his car. The Russian leader will stay at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, the traditional residence for visiting heads of state.

The formal program begins Wednesday morning with a welcome ceremony in Tiananmen Square, followed by talks at the Great Hall of the People. The two leaders will sit again later in the day for an informal tea session and a gala reception marking the 25th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, signed in 2001.

The Kremlin said roughly 40 documents are expected to be signed, along with a 47-page joint statement on the partnership and a separate joint declaration on building "a new type of international relations" and a multipolar world order. Putin is traveling with a delegation that includes deputy prime ministers, ministers, and the heads of major state corporations and banks.

The Comparison With Trump

The visit lands four days after President Donald Trump departed Beijing on May 15, the first U.S. presidential visit to China in nearly a decade. Beijing's choreography of the back-to-back visits is part of the point.

In a video address released ahead of his trip, Putin said relations between Russia and China had reached "a truly unprecedented level." "The close strategic relationship between Russia and China plays a major, stabilizing role globally," he said. "Without allying against anyone, we seek peace and universal prosperity."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had "very high expectations" for the visit. Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said the trip had been planned since February and was unrelated to the Trump summit, but he acknowledged that it would be a "good chance to exchange views" on the U.S. president's time in Beijing.

"The Trump visit was about stabilizing the world's most important bilateral relationship; the Putin visit is about reassuring a long-standing strategic partner," said Wang Zichen of the Center for China and Globalization. "For China, these two tracks are not mutually exclusive."

Patricia Kim of the Brookings Institution noted that Xi did not extend the "old friend" language to Trump that he has used for Putin in past visits. "The Xi-Putin relationship does not require that kind of performative reassurance," she said, adding that the modest outcomes of the Trump summit "likely reassure Moscow that Xi did not strike any understanding with Trump that would materially undercut Russian interests."

Ukraine and the Pressure on Putin

Putin arrives under strain. The war in Ukraine is now in its fifth year, and Russia's territorial gains have slowed sharply. Ukrainian forces have retaken roughly 400 square kilometers of previously occupied territory since April, and Kyiv's long-range drone campaign has reached deep into Russia, including Moscow itself.

This month's Victory Day parade on Red Square was scaled back, with no ballistic missiles or tank columns on display — a visible sign that Russia's hardware remains tied up at the front. State pollster VTsIOM put Putin's approval rating at 65.6 percent in April, the lowest reading since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The government has raised the VAT by 2 percentage points to 22 percent and has reportedly approached oligarchs for additional contributions to the war effort.

Trump and Xi discussed Ukraine during last week's summit, but the U.S. president left without a public breakthrough. The Financial Times reported that Xi told Trump that Putin might come to regret the decision to invade. Both Beijing and the Kremlin denied the account.

"Xi will almost certainly brief Putin on his summit with Trump," Kim said. Natasha Kuhrt of King's College London put it more bluntly: "The likelihood of Russia prevailing in the war is far less certain. This means that Russia's value to Beijing could diminish."

Energy and the Power of Siberia 2

Trade is one area where the relationship is moving in Russia's direction. Two-way trade rose 16.1 percent in the first four months of 2026 from the same period a year earlier, after a 6.5 percent decline in 2025. Russian oil exports to China climbed 35 percent in the first quarter, according to Ushakov.

Energy is expected to dominate the working agenda. Negotiations on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which would carry Russian gas from Western Siberia into northern China, have been a recurring topic in recent meetings and may move forward this week. Trump told Fox News during his own visit that Beijing had agreed to buy more U.S. oil to feed what he called China's "insatiable" appetite for energy — a comment Moscow will want to test.

Putin said earlier this month that the two sides had reached "a very substantial step forward in our cooperation in the oil and gas sector," adding that "practically all the key issues have been agreed upon." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in April that Russia could "compensate" for any energy shortfall China faces as the Iran war disrupts global supplies.

The Iran Question and a Multipolar Pitch

The Middle East is the area where Russian and Chinese interests are not aligned. China relies on free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has held effectively closed, to keep its imports flowing. Russia has been benefiting from the war as Western buyers turn to its energy supplies amid the disruption.

Trump told Fox News that Xi had committed during their summit not to provide Iran with military equipment. Russia, by contrast, has supplied Tehran with missile components, rocket fuel, and intelligence support since the war began in late February.

The joint declaration on a "multipolar world order" expected from Wednesday's talks is the broader framing the two governments want to project: a partnership that operates outside of, and as a counterweight to, U.S. influence. Putin has cast the relationship in those terms before. "We stand only to benefit from this, from the stability and constructive engagement between the U.S. and China," he said in his pre-arrival message. The next two days in Beijing will show how far that line can be stretched in practice..

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Trump Prepares To Meet Xi In Beijing

• Starmer Fights For His Political Life

• Putin Hails Test Of New ‘Satan II’ ICBM

Trump Prepares To Meet Xi In Beijing

President Trump with Chinese President Xi (Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Donald Trump flew out of Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday afternoon for a three-day summit with Xi Jinping, the first visit to Beijing by a sitting U.S. president in nearly a decade. The trip was originally scheduled for earlier this year and was pushed back by the Iran war.

Air Force One is set to land Wednesday evening. Thursday's agenda opens with a welcome ceremony and morning bilateral, followed by an afternoon walk through the Temple of Heaven and a state banquet. The two leaders meet again Friday for tea and a working lunch before Trump flies home.

"We're going to have a very good meeting," Trump told reporters before boarding. He said the agenda would include "a long talk" about Iran.

The traveling party includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Eric Trump and Lara Trump. Melania Trump is not on the trip.

Iran War at the Top of the Agenda

The war Washington and Israel opened on February 28 has dominated the run-up to the summit. China is Iran's largest oil customer and has refused to honor U.S. secondary sanctions on that trade.

The Treasury Department on Monday added 12 individuals and entities to its sanctions list — including several in Hong Kong — accusing them of moving Iranian crude into China. Hengli, China's largest independent refiner, is among the firms hit. Three Chinese companies have also been sanctioned for selling satellite imagery to Iran during the war.

Beijing has answered with policy of its own. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on Tuesday repeated that China "firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions," and officials recently ordered five domestic refineries to ignore U.S. measures on Iranian oil under a 2021 blocking statute.

Trump played down the gap with Xi. "I don't think we need any help with Iran. We'll win it one way or the other. We'll win it peacefully or otherwise," he said. He still plans to ask Xi to lean on Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut at the start of the conflict.

The Five B's and a Business Delegation

U.S. officials have boiled the trade agenda down to five items they call the "Five B's": Boeing, beef, beans, a Board of Trade and a Board of Investment. Beijing is working a parallel three-item list — tariffs, technology and Taiwan.

The two sides are operating under the one-year tariff truce reached at the October summit in Busan. Before that truce, China's import tax on U.S. goods stood at 125 percent and Trump's tariff on Chinese-made products at 145 percent. A senior administration official said Washington is going to Beijing seeking purchase commitments worth tens of billions of dollars.

Agriculture is a central piece of that ask. China bought roughly $24 billion in U.S. farm goods in 2024, the largest single market for American producers, before Beijing froze much of that trade. Soybean farmers are watching for confirmation of last year's commitment to take 25 million metric tons annually through 2028 — a number that matters in farm states ahead of the November midterms.

Roughly 16 corporate executives are flying with Trump: Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Apple's Tim Cook, Boeing's Kelly Ortberg, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, Goldman Sachs's David Solomon, Citi's Jane Fraser, Cargill's Brian Sikes, Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon, Micron's Sanjay Mehrotra, Mastercard's Michael Miebach, Visa's Ryan McInerney, GE Aerospace's H. Lawrence Culp, Coherent's Jim Anderson, Illumina's Jacob Thaysen and Meta's Dina Powell McCormick.

Taiwan, Arms Sales and Semiconductors

Trump signaled on Monday that he would raise U.S. arms sales to Taiwan with Xi, breaking with the longstanding American line that Washington does not negotiate that question with Beijing. In December, his administration approved an $11 billion arms package for the island, the largest ever.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office staked out its position on Wednesday. "Our resolve to oppose Taiwan independence is as firm as a rock, and our capability to crush Taiwan independence is unbreakable," spokesman Zhang Han said. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, called the island "a sovereign, independent nation" that would not bow to pressure.

Asked whether Beijing might invade, Trump pointed to his rapport with Xi. "I think we'll be fine. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. He knows I don't want that to happen," he said.

Technology will run alongside Taiwan. Beijing wants U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors loosened. Washington is bringing concerns about artificial intelligence policy, fentanyl precursors and Chinese activity in the South China Sea.

Human Rights Cases on the Table

Trump told reporters Monday that he will raise two human rights cases directly with Xi. The first is Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher imprisoned for more than five years and sentenced earlier this year under Hong Kong's national security law. The second is pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of Zion Church in Beijing, arrested in 2025 over his religious activities.

Neither side is going into the summit promising a breakthrough. Most of the focus is on whether the Busan tariff truce gets extended and whether narrower deals on aircraft, agriculture and investment come out of the two days of meetings.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Rubio: Operation Fury Is Over

• Armenia Holds Summit With The E.U.

• Japan & Philippines Deepen Defense Ties Amid Tensions With China

Rubio: Operation Fury Is Over

(Mark Schiefelbein - AP)

_{By: Atlas}

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the White House Tuesday that the United States' opening military campaign against Iran, Operation Epic Fury, has concluded and that the current U.S. posture in the Strait of Hormuz is a separate, defensive operation aimed at restoring freedom of navigation rather than reigniting the war.

The briefing — Rubio's first as fill-in spokesman while press secretary Karoline Leavitt is on maternity leave — came one day after the heaviest single day of fire since the April 8 ceasefire took hold, with Iranian missile and drone strikes on the United Arab Emirates, six Iranian fast boats sunk by U.S. helicopters, and the first U.S.-flagged commercial vessel transit out of the Persian Gulf under what the administration is calling Project Freedom.

"Operation Epic Fury has concluded. We've completed our objectives in that operation," Rubio said. "This is a defensive operation. And what that means is very simple: There's no shooting unless we're shot at first. We are only responding if attacked first."

The framing is consequential. The administration has used the same logic to argue that it is no longer required to seek congressional authorization for ongoing military activity in the Gulf, since the operation that triggered the 60-day War Powers Act clock — which expired Friday — is, in its account, formally over. President Trump notified Congress to that effect last week. Democrats and outside legal scholars have rejected the theory.

The defensive framework

Rubio walked through the structure of Project Freedom in detail. The U.S. is not formally escorting commercial vessels through the strait. Instead, three Navy destroyers — the USS Truxtun, USS Mason, and USS Rafael Peralta — are positioned inside the Persian Gulf west of the strait, providing what officials described as a multi-layered defensive shield of ships, aircraft, and air-defense systems for any commercial vessel choosing to transit. U.S. Central Command has committed more than 100 land- and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members to the operation.

Rubio said the U.S. has been in contact "with a bunch" of shipping liners about helping them move out of the strait, and that hundreds of vessels were lining up to transit. Two U.S.-flagged commercial ships have already exited under U.S. military protection. The first, Maersk's Alliance Fairfax, made the run Monday. The CS Anthem, a chemical tanker, became the second on Tuesday.

The Iranian regime, Rubio said, "cannot be allowed to dictate who uses this vital waterway." He called Iran's actions in the strait — the laying of mines, the firing on civilian vessels, the imposition of a $1-per-barrel transit toll — a "criminal act" with no basis in international law. He cited 10 civilian sailor deaths to date as a result of the conflict in the waterway. "They're isolated, they're starving, they're vulnerable, and at least 10 sailors have died as a result, civilian sailors," he said, without providing further detail.

Rubio added that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, in place since April 13, is now costing Tehran roughly $500 million a day in lost oil revenue. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a separate interview Sunday that Iran had collected less than $1.3 million in transit tolls and that Iranian oil storage was filling up to the point where wells might soon have to be shut in.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, briefing reporters at the Pentagon shortly before Rubio's appearance, framed the operation in similar terms. "Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration," he said. He described the U.S. presence in the strait as a "red, white and blue dome" being gifted to global commerce. The ceasefire, Hegseth said, "is not over."

The ceasefire question

Whether the ceasefire actually still holds is increasingly a question of definition rather than fact. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters Tuesday that Iran has attacked U.S. forces more than 10 times since the truce began on April 8, has fired on nine commercial vessels, and has seized two container ships. None of those incidents, he said, has crossed the threshold for restarting major combat operations. "What I'll say is it's low harassing fire right now," Caine said. "It feels like Iran is grasping at straws. The threshold of restarting is a political decision above my pay grade."

Rubio's framing went further. He told reporters that the administration has shifted from what he called Operation Epic Fury to what one analyst, summarizing his remarks, described as "Economic Fury" — a campaign of pressure designed to make the cost of Iran's strait posture untenable rather than to engineer regime change through direct military action. "Iran has a high pain threshold," Rubio said, "but not an unlimited pain threshold."

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday, declined to specify what action by Iran would count as a ceasefire violation. "You'll find out, because I'll let you know," he said. "They know what to do, and they know what not to do, more importantly, actually." He said Iran's military had been reduced to firing "peashooters" and that Tehran "should wave the white flag of surrender" but was too proud to do so. "If this were a fight, they'd stop it," Trump said.

Iranian officials publicly disputed both the U.S. account of Monday's engagements and the framing of the broader situation. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on X that both Washington and Abu Dhabi "should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire." A spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters denied that Iranian forces had carried out missile or drone operations against the UAE in recent days, saying any actions were "exclusively" directed at the United States. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf called the U.S. operation a violation of the ceasefire and said the situation had become "intolerable."

The diplomatic track

Rubio said U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are continuing to explore a diplomatic path with Iran, but he made clear that any agreement would have to address not only Iran's enrichment activities but also the disposition of nuclear material the administration believes Iran has buried at undisclosed locations.

"The president's been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that's buried deep somewhere that they still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out," Rubio said. He declined to provide detail on what progress had been made and said the agreement would not need to be finalized in a single sitting. "This is highly complex, and highly technical, but we have to have a diplomatic solution that is very clear about the topics that they are willing to negotiate on and the extent and the concessions they are willing to make at the front end."

Iran's 14-point proposal, delivered through Pakistani mediators last weekend, calls for the U.S. to lift sanctions, end the naval blockade, withdraw forces from the region, and cease all hostilities — including Israel's continuing operations in Lebanon. Iranian officials have made clear that the plan does not address the nuclear file in its first phase, with the most contentious issues deferred to a 30-day implementation window. Trump has described the proposal as unacceptable and said Iran has "not yet paid a big enough price."

The U.N. track and the wider audience

Rubio also announced that the United States, joined by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, has put forward a new draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council demanding that Iran cease attacks, mining, and tolling in the strait, disclose the number and location of mines it has laid, and cooperate with their removal. The resolution also calls for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor.

A similar resolution introduced last month was vetoed by Russia and China. Rubio said the new draft had been adjusted in an effort to win broader support, particularly from Asian states, and that he hoped Beijing would relay to Tehran that Iran's strategy in the strait is producing global isolation rather than leverage. "Find me a country, not just 25 experts, but a country, that is agreeing with Iran's actions in the Strait of Hormuz," former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Mark Kimmitt said in a separate analysis. "No country, no international organisation, not the UN, has supported Iran's closure of the strait."

Rubio framed the upcoming Security Council vote as a test of the institution itself. "We're not even asking people to commit troops to the region and help blow up the Iranian boats," he said. "All we're asking them to do is to condemn it, to call on Iran to stop blowing ships, to remove these mines, and to allow humanitarian relief to come through. That's it. There's a very modest request. If you're telling me that the international community and hundreds of countries cannot rally behind that, then I don't know what the utility of the U.N. system is."

The diplomatic and military timelines are now running in parallel. Trump told reporters Tuesday the conflict could stretch another two or three weeks. Rubio said the United States has "already won" the opening war and is now waiting for Iran to "accept the reality of the situation." Iran, for its part, announced a new "Persian Gulf Strait Authority" Tuesday — a formalization of the maritime regime Tehran has been imposing since February. The two sides are no longer fighting about whether the strait is open. They are fighting about whose framework defines what an open strait looks like.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• UAE Leaves OPEC In Monumental Economic Shift

• King Charles III Makes U.S. Visit To Deepen Ties

• Former FBI Director Indicted Over Trump Post

UAE Leaves OPEC In Monumental Economic Shift

Secretary-General of OPEC Haitham al-Ghais (R) and Saudi Arabia's Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud (2nd L) hold a press conference after the 33rd OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) and non-OPEC ministerial (Askin Kiyagan - Anadolu Agency via Getty Images - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday that it will withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the broader OPEC+ alliance effective May 1, stripping the cartel of its third-largest producer and removing one of the few members with the spare capacity needed to manage global oil markets. The decision, made public through the state-run WAM news agency, ends 59 years of UAE participation in the group and marks the most consequential defection from OPEC since Qatar's exit in 2019.

"This decision follows a comprehensive review of the UAE's production policy and its current and future capacity and is based on our national interest and our commitment to contributing effectively to meeting the market's pressing needs," the UAE Energy Ministry said in its statement. UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei told Reuters in his first remarks after the announcement that the move was "a sovereign national decision" rooted in long-term economic priorities and that the UAE had not consulted with any other producer, including Saudi Arabia, before reaching it.

The withdrawal lands in the middle of the most acute energy shock the Gulf has experienced since the 1973 oil embargo. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne crude and liquefied natural gas normally moves, has been effectively closed since early March in connection with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Brent crude traded above $111 a barrel Tuesday, more than 50 percent above its prewar level. West Texas Intermediate climbed roughly 4 percent on the session to about $100.

The terms of the exit

Abu Dhabi joined OPEC in 1967, four years before the UAE federation itself was formed. The country has produced roughly 3.4 million barrels per day before the war, with installed capacity that analysts at Capital Economics and Rystad Energy place closer to 4.8 million barrels per day. The UAE has set a public target of 5 million barrels per day of capacity by 2027.

Inside OPEC's quota framework, the UAE was effectively capped at less than 3 million barrels per day. Al-Mazrouei has been candid for years that those production limits were too tight for a country that has invested heavily in expanding its upstream capacity. "Being a country with no obligation under the group will give us flexibility," he said Tuesday.

Once the May 1 withdrawal takes effect, OPEC will be left with 11 core members: Algeria, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. The remaining members collectively account for roughly 30 percent of global oil supply. The OPEC+ framework, which since 2016 has bound the cartel together with Russia, Kazakhstan, Oman, Mexico, and several other producers, will lose its second-most-powerful Gulf voice.

The UAE's official statement framed the move as forward-looking. "This decision reflects the UAE's long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile, including accelerated investment in domestic energy production," the government said, adding that any additional production would come "in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions."

Why now

Speculation about a UAE departure has circulated through energy markets for years. The proximate trigger appears to be a combination of long-running quota frustrations and a sharp deterioration in Gulf cohesion brought on by the Iran war.

The UAE has been a primary target of Iranian retaliation since hostilities began on February 28. Thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have been launched at Gulf Cooperation Council states since the war's outbreak, and at least a dozen people have been killed across the Gulf monarchies. Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, used a public forum on Monday to deliver an unusually pointed critique of the GCC's response.

"The Gulf Cooperation Council countries supported each other logistically, but politically and militarily, I think their position has been the weakest historically," Gargash said. "I expect this weak stance from the Arab League, and I am not surprised by it, but I haven't expected it from the Cooperation Council, and I am surprised by it."

The UAE, while not naming names, has made clear that it views Saudi Arabia's wartime posture as inadequate. The two governments — once close partners in the war in Yemen — have grown into open competitors over economic, regional, and now energy policy. Saudi-UAE friction came to a head in late December when Saudi forces bombed what Riyadh said was a weapons shipment bound for UAE-backed separatists in Yemen. Saudi-owned broadcasters that had been based in Dubai have since been pulled back to the kingdom.

Toby Matthiesen, a Gulf scholar at the University of Bristol, called the withdrawal "a very significant move" that "signals a rupture in the Gulf." Karen Young of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy said the exit "fits into the UAE need for flexibility with key energy consumers as well — including a future relationship with China and a more competitive relationship with Saudi Arabia."

Tellingly, the UAE on Tuesday sent its foreign minister rather than its president to a Gulf leaders' summit hosted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, a meeting convened in part to coordinate the GCC response to Iran's attacks. Al-Mazrouei publicly downplayed the rupture, telling CNBC: "We've been working together for years and years. We have the highest respect for the Saudis for leading OPEC."

What it means for the market

The immediate price impact is muted, principally because Hormuz is closed. As Mohamad El Chamaa noted in his analysis for the Washington Post, the UAE "can produce more, but not export more at the moment." Most observers expect the structural impact to play out over months and years rather than days.

Jorge León, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, said the UAE's exit "removes one of the core pillars underpinning OPEC's ability to manage the market." The cartel will become "structurally weaker" as a result, he said, with less spare capacity concentrated within the group and a diminished ability to "calibrate supply and stabilize prices."

David Goldwyn, who served as the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs from 2009 to 2011, told CNBC the move undermines Saudi Arabia's grip on the organization. Riyadh "will still have a significant ability to discipline the market with its own spare capacity," he said, "but it will have a weaker hand now that the UAE is no longer a member."

The longer-term concern among analysts is volatility. John Kilduff of Again Capital said the UAE's departure "could prove bearish later" because it weakens the producer cohesion needed to defend prices during a glut. Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates put the post-Hormuz scenario more directly: "When the conflict between the USA and Iran ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens, I expect that the UAE will produce as much oil as they can, utilizing any spare capacity that they have held in reserve."

That dynamic — a freshly unbound UAE racing to recapture market share once Hormuz reopens — could intensify a rivalry with Saudi Arabia that has already grown sharper. Simon-Peter Massabni, head of business development at xs.com, warned that the move could trigger a "price war" between the two countries and threaten "cohesive policies that maintain stability in the markets."

A win for Trump, a question for Riyadh

The withdrawal is being read in Washington as a strategic gain. President Donald Trump has spent two terms accusing OPEC of "ripping off the rest of the world," telling the U.N. General Assembly in 2018 that "we defend many of these nations for nothing, and then they take advantage of us by giving us high oil prices." The Trump administration has consistently linked U.S. military protection in the Gulf to oil price discipline.

The administration's relationship with Abu Dhabi has tightened during the war. Trump disclosed last week that Washington and the UAE are exploring a dollar-dirham currency swap line aimed at stabilizing UAE foreign exchange reserves through the conflict's energy-driven turbulence. The UAE, since signing the Abraham Accords in 2020, has cultivated its U.S. and Israeli relationships as primary levers of regional influence — a posture that has further distanced it from Riyadh's more cautious approach.

For Saudi Arabia, the loss of its closest Gulf production partner inside OPEC carries both practical and symbolic weight. With Iran preoccupied by war, Iraq routinely overproducing its quota, and Russia maintaining its own ambiguous relationship with OPEC discipline, Riyadh now finds itself the lone Gulf heavyweight inside a cartel that produces a steadily smaller share of world supply. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated U.S. crude output at more than 13 million barrels per day at the start of this year, well above Saudi Arabia's prewar production level.

In its closing line on Tuesday, the UAE said: "We reaffirm our appreciation for the efforts of both OPEC and the OPEC+ alliance and wish them success." The first real test of how much that success is still possible will come the moment the Strait of Hormuz reopens — and the UAE's idle barrels begin moving without a quota attached.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Agrees To Extend Ceasefire

• Chinese Pressures Force Taiwan President To Postpone Eswatini Trip

• Congressional Rep Resigns Amid 15 Count Criminal Indictment

U.S. Agrees To Extend Ceasefire

President Trump (MediaPunch - Backgrid)

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States would extend its ceasefire with Iran on an open-ended basis, pulling back from earlier threats to resume bombing and giving Pakistani mediators more room to try to salvage a second round of peace talks that had effectively collapsed hours before the two-week truce was set to expire.

"Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The president said he had directed the military to keep the U.S. Navy's blockade of Iranian ports in place and, "in all other respects, remain ready and able." The ceasefire would continue, he said, "until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other."

The announcement marked a sharp reversal from comments Trump made only hours earlier. Speaking to CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday morning, he said that if no agreement was reached by Wednesday, "I expect to be bombing, because that's a better attitude to go in with." He added that the military was "raring to go."

A day of false starts in Islamabad

The extension capped a chaotic sequence that began with Vice President JD Vance, Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff, and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner preparing to lead a U.S. delegation to Islamabad for a second round of face-to-face talks. By midday, the trip was on hold. Vance arrived at the White House shortly before 1 p.m. instead of boarding the roughly 17-hour flight to the Pakistani capital. Witkoff and Kushner flew up from Miami for afternoon meetings in Washington.

A White House official initially said Vance was staying behind for "additional policy meetings." After Trump's Truth Social post, the same official said the Pakistan trip "will not be happening today" and offered no timeline for when it might be rescheduled.

Pakistani authorities had spent days preparing for the talks. The Serena Hotel in Islamabad, which hosted the first round, had been cleared of guests. Roads into the capital's diplomatic enclave were sealed off, and a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft carrying security equipment had already landed at Nur Khan Air Base. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Tuesday afternoon that Pakistan had made "sincere efforts to convince the Iranian leadership to participate" but had not yet received a response from Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told state broadcaster IRIB that no final decision had been made on attending, citing what he described as "contradictory messages" and "unacceptable actions" from Washington — in particular, the ongoing U.S. naval blockade.

Prime Minister Sharif thanked Trump in a post on X for "graciously accepting our request to extend the ceasefire to allow ongoing diplomatic efforts to take their course."

Iran's public posture hardens

Iranian officials spent Tuesday signaling that Tehran would not negotiate while the blockade remained in place. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker who led Iran's team in the first round of talks, wrote on X overnight that "we do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threat, and over the past two weeks, we have been preparing to unveil new cards on the battlefield." He accused Trump of trying to turn the negotiating table into "a table of surrender."

Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Ghalibaf, said Trump's ceasefire extension "means nothing" and described the continuing blockade as "no different from bombardment." He suggested the extension could be "a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike."

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani, told a small group of reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that talks would resume only if Washington lifted the blockade. "If they want to sit at a table and discuss and find a political solution, they will find us ready," he said. "If they want to go to the war, in this case also, Iran is ready for that."

Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, flatly disputed Trump's characterization of events, saying Iran had not asked for a ceasefire extension and reiterating threats to break the U.S. blockade by force.

The blockade keeps tightening

The diplomatic freeze unfolded alongside a visible expansion of American maritime enforcement. U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that the Navy has now forced 28 vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port since the blockade took effect April 13.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance fired on and seized the Iranian-flagged container ship Touska in the Gulf of Oman on Sunday, the first forcible boarding of the blockade. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit now have custody of the vessel.

Overnight Tuesday, U.S. forces carried out a second interdiction in the Bay of Bengal, boarding the stateless tanker M/T Tifani in the Indo-Pacific theater. The Defense Department said the vessel was transporting sanctioned Iranian oil. A U.S. defense official said additional boardings in the Pacific were possible, in line with comments last week from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who previewed a broader global maritime enforcement campaign.

Iran condemned both operations. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the blockade an "act of war" and described the strike on the Touska as hostage-taking. "Iran knows how to neutralize restrictions, how to defend its interests, and how to resist bullying," he wrote on X.

Markets, energy, and what comes next

Global markets reacted to the twin signals — a ceasefire extension layered on top of a continued blockade — with caution. Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded near $95 a barrel for much of the day before climbing to roughly $99 after Trump's announcement, reflecting the market's conclusion that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was not about to resume in any meaningful way. West Texas Intermediate moved up to about $89 a barrel. U.S. retail gasoline averaged $4.02 a gallon Tuesday, well above pre-war levels. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said this week that prewar prices are unlikely to return until next year.

The strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas normally moves, remains effectively closed. Iran briefly reopened the waterway on April 17 before shutting it again the following day, citing the continuation of the U.S. blockade. Iranian forces have fired on multiple commercial vessels attempting to transit the strait, and Tehran has reportedly been charging transit fees of up to $2 million per ship to authorize passage.

The broader picture facing negotiators has not shifted meaningfully. Iran still holds roughly 940 pounds of highly enriched uranium, buried under the debris of sites struck during last year's U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign. Trump has insisted the material be removed from the country entirely. Iran has proposed diluting it domestically while preserving what it calls its sovereign right to a peaceful civilian program. A first round of talks held April 11 ran more than 21 hours without producing an agreement.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires congressional authorization for sustained hostilities after 60 days. The war is now in its 53rd day. The White House considers that provision unconstitutional, but it has already become a point of leverage in a Senate where Republicans Susan Collins and Thom Tillis have signaled they would support constraining the president's war powers if the conflict reaches that threshold.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Germany And Ukraine Strike Landmark Defense Deal

• Israel & Lebanon Hold Direct Talks Brokered By U.S.

• Mossad Chief States Iranian Regime Change Is The Ultimate Goal

Germany And Ukraine Strike Landmark Defense Deal

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (R) and President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin on April 14, 2026. (Tobias Schwarz - AFP via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Germany and Ukraine signed a defense cooperation agreement in Berlin on Tuesday and formally upgraded their bilateral relationship to a strategic partnership, deepening military-industrial ties at a moment when American attention has drifted toward the Middle East and Kyiv is looking to Europe to fill the gap.

President Volodymyr Zelensky led a government delegation to the German capital, where he and Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a €4 billion defense package covering air defense, Patriot missiles, drone production, and long-range strike capabilities. The two countries also signed agreements on the electronic exchange of battlefield data and on support for Ukraine's industrial recovery — 10 cooperation agreements in all.

"No army in Europe has been as battle-tested in recent decades as Ukraine's," Merz said at a joint press conference. "No society has become more resilient than Ukraine. No defense industry has become more innovative than Ukraine's." He added bluntly: "Russia has no chance of winning the war."

The partnership was laid out in a 15-page declaration released by the German chancellery. It commits both governments to closer coordination on air defense, drones, ammunition, and long-range weapons, while also covering post-war reconstruction, anti-corruption measures, energy resilience, and Ukraine's path toward EU and NATO membership.

The Drone Deal

The centerpiece of the agreement is a joint drone production arrangement that Zelensky said could become one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Details are still being worked out, but Germany's defense ministry said the project would create a joint venture to supply thousands of drones to the Ukrainian military.

An annex to the agreement listed specific arrangements, including joint production of long-range Anubis strike drones and mid-range Seth-X drones, as well as drone supplies for third countries — including Gulf states targeted by Iranian attacks during the current Middle East conflict. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the deal includes an initial production run of 5,000 AI-enhanced mid-strike drones.

"Ukrainian experience plus German engineering equals a new standard for defense tech," Fedorov posted on social media.

The drone cooperation builds on existing ties between German and Ukrainian companies. Zelensky visited a drone production facility in Munich in February that was established by a joint venture between Germany's Quantum Systems and Ukraine's Frontline Robotics. During Tuesday's talks, Quantum Systems announced two additional joint ventures with Ukrainian partners — one focused on air defense and another on unmanned ground systems.

Ukraine's drone industry has expanded rapidly since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, producing air and sea drones, electronic warfare systems, and missiles capable of reaching roughly 1,750 kilometers into Russian territory. Zelensky said Ukraine has been approached about drone cooperation by eight Middle Eastern and Gulf countries, as well as Turkey, Iraq, and nations in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Patriot Missiles and Air Defense

Beyond drones, the €4 billion package will fund contracts for several hundred Patriot air defense missiles from U.S. manufacturer Raytheon and additional launchers for IRIS-T air defense systems from Germany's Diehl Defence. Fedorov said the package should finance 36 IRIS-T launchers and called it "a massive boost for our air defense — to protect our cities and critical infrastructure."

The air defense component carries particular urgency. More Patriot missiles were used by the United States in the first four weeks of its war against Iran than in four years of the conflict in Ukraine, delaying deliveries to both Ukraine and European allies and raising concerns about stock shortages. Ukraine remains under daily drone and missile bombardment from Russia — on the same day the deal was signed, a Russian missile strike on the eastern city of Dnipro killed five people and hospitalized 21 others.

Germany also agreed to invest several hundred million euros to finance deep-strike capabilities for Ukraine. Fedorov said Berlin would provide around €300 million to scale production of Ukrainian long-range weapons, allowing Kyiv to "strike further and more precisely, shifting the balance on the battlefield."

Sharing Battlefield Data

A less visible but potentially significant element of the agreement is a memorandum of understanding on the exchange of battlefield data. Germany will gain access to lessons learned from Ukrainian combat experience, including analysis of German weapon systems deployed in Ukraine — among them the Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery system, the RCH 155, and the IRIS-T air defense platform.

Ukraine will also share data from its digital AI system Avenger, which detects enemy vehicles, and its battlefield management system Delta. Merz acknowledged that the data exchange would lead to the development of new weapon systems, though he declined to specify what kind.

"The fact that we are now developing such a system in Europe, together with Ukraine, also gives Europe a greater degree of independence," he said.

Zelensky framed the exchange as a two-way street. "Our experience can be incorporated into the European security system," he said. "It has proven its worth, and our experience has also proven its worth in the Middle East."

The Broader European Picture

The deal was signed against a backdrop of stalled U.S.-led diplomacy on Ukraine. American efforts to negotiate an end to the war have been sidelined since the outbreak of the Iran conflict, though the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told the Security Council on Monday that Washington would continue to push for a negotiated settlement.

Merz said Europe's involvement in any agreement with Moscow was "indispensable" and that a meeting of national security advisers was being organized, with the United States invited to participate. He stressed that Germany's commitment to Ukraine was "a very clear signal" to Russia.

The partnership also comes at a moment of potential change in European dynamics. The €90 billion EU loan for Ukraine that had been blocked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán may now be released following Orbán's election defeat over the weekend. Merz said the funds "must now be disbursed quickly" and that "Russia should take this seriously."

Zelensky said Ukraine was counting on Germany, as one of the EU's leading members, to help unlock the loan so Kyiv could invest in domestic production. He noted that Ukraine has the capacity to produce twice as much military equipment as it currently deploys but lacks the funding to scale up. "We simply don't have enough money," he said.

Germany has delivered approximately €55 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia's invasion in 2022, making it Europe's largest provider. The current budget sets aside €11.5 billion for Ukraine support. The strategic partnership announced Tuesday formalizes what has become one of the most consequential defense relationships in Europe — one that both sides are now betting can reshape the continent's security architecture for years to come.

From Berlin, Zelensky traveled to Oslo, where he and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre signed a separate defense cooperation declaration covering drones, electronic warfare, and maritime security. Norway plans €7.66 billion in support for Ukraine in 2026. A meeting of the 50-plus partner nations that coordinate weapons aid for Kyiv was scheduled for Wednesday.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Iran And U.S. Agree To Two Week Ceasefire

• Vance Campaigns With Orban Ahead Of Hungary Election

• Beijing Brokered Peace Talks Have Been ‘Useful’ Between Pakistan & Afghanistan

Iran And U.S. Agree To Two Week Ceasefire

President Donald Trump mimics in the White House on April 6, 2026, in Washington, DC (AFP Via Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The United States and Iran agreed Tuesday night to a two-week ceasefire, pulling back from what had looked hours earlier like an imminent escalation of catastrophic proportions. The deal, brokered by Pakistan, came roughly 90 minutes before President Donald Trump's self-imposed 8 p.m. deadline — a cutoff he had paired with threats to destroy Iran's power grid, bridges, and civilian infrastructure if Tehran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump announced the agreement on Truth Social, crediting Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir for requesting that he hold off on the strikes. He said Iran had submitted a 10-point proposal that he characterized as "a workable basis on which" the two countries could continue negotiations.

"Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated," Trump wrote. He said all U.S. military objectives had been met and called the deal an honor "to have this Longterm problem close to resolution."

Iran's Supreme National Security Council confirmed it had accepted the ceasefire shortly after, though in markedly different terms. Its statement said the agreement did not signify the end of the war and warned that any breach would be met with full force. "Our hands remain upon the trigger," the council said.

The 10-Point Plan

The White House did not publicly detail the contents of Iran's 10-point proposal. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to outline the specifics, telling reporters that "President Trump's words speak for themselves" and that negotiations would continue.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council, however, published what it described as the framework. The council said the plan commits the United States to guaranteeing non-aggression, continuing Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz, accepting uranium enrichment, lifting all primary and secondary sanctions, ending all UN Security Council and Board of Governors resolutions against Iran, paying compensation, withdrawing U.S. combat forces from the region, and halting the war on all fronts — including, as the council put it, against "the heroic Islamic resistance of Lebanon."

The council characterized the agreement as "an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat" for the United States. The White House made no direct response to that characterization.

Whether Washington has actually agreed to those terms or considers them aspirational starting points for further negotiation remains unclear. Trump's language suggested the broad outlines were settled but the details were not.

Pakistan's Role

The ceasefire would not have happened without Islamabad. Sharif had publicly urged Trump earlier Tuesday to extend his deadline by two weeks and asked Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for the same period as a goodwill gesture. He framed Pakistan's intervention as a sincere effort to let diplomacy run its course.

After the agreement was reached, Sharif announced that U.S. and Iranian negotiating teams would meet in Islamabad on Friday for another round of talks. "I warmly welcome the sagacious gesture and extend deepest gratitude to the leadership of both the countries and invite their delegations to Islamabad on Friday, 10th April 2026, to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes," he posted on X.

Reporting indicated that China also played a role in advancing the negotiations through Pakistan, though Beijing's precise involvement was not detailed publicly.

Sharif's initial post on X contained a heading that read "Draft – Pakistan's PM Message on X," raising questions about who authored the text. The significance of that detail, if any, was not immediately clear.

The Hours Before the Deal

The agreement capped a day of extraordinary brinkmanship. Early Tuesday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran's "whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if Tehran did not come to terms. He had already given Iran until 8 p.m. to accept a deal or face attacks on its energy infrastructure.

That language drew bipartisan criticism in Washington. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump "a very sick person." Republican Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas said he did not support the destruction of "a whole civilization" and that such rhetoric was "not consistent with the principles that have long guided America."

Even as negotiations were reportedly ongoing behind the scenes, the U.S. escalated its military campaign. Overnight into Tuesday, American forces launched approximately 90 strikes against targets on Kharg Island in the Strait of Hormuz — the first time the U.S. had struck the island since March 13. Officials said the targets did not include oil infrastructure but did not specify what was hit.

Tehran initially responded to Trump's threats by signaling through intermediaries that it was cutting off communications with Washington, though competing reports suggested back-channel talks never fully stopped. Iran's UN envoy, Amir-Saeid Iravani, told the Security Council that Iran would "exercise, without hesitation, its inherent right of self-defense."

Tuesday's deadline was the fifth that Trump had set and then adjusted. He first issued a 48-hour ultimatum on March 21 for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. He extended it on March 23, again on March 26, and again over the past weekend before settling on the April 7 deadline that ultimately produced the ceasefire.

What the Ceasefire Actually Requires

Under the agreement's immediate terms, Iran said it would allow safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz with coordination from its armed forces during the two-week window, subject to what it described as "technical limitations." Both Iran and Oman will charge tolls on vessels transiting the waterway. All U.S. offensive military operations have been halted.

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a statement that if attacks against Iran cease, "our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations." Israel reportedly also accepted the ceasefire framework.

Oil markets reacted immediately. West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped more than 18 percent within minutes of the announcement, falling from around $107 to under $100 a barrel — its lowest point since late March. Earlier in the day, with the deadline looming and Trump's rhetoric at its most extreme, prices had peaked near $117.

The two-week window gives both sides time to negotiate but guarantees nothing. Iran's security council made clear it views the ceasefire as a pause, not a conclusion. Trump framed it as the near-completion of a historic peace deal. The distance between those two descriptions is where the next round of talks in Islamabad will either succeed or break down.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday! No jokes for today!

Today’s topics:

• Iranian President Signals Willingness To End War

• Trump Signs Executive Order Regarding Mail In Ballots

• Japan Deploys Long Range Missiles For First Time In Its History

Iranian President Signals Willingness To End War

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 24, 2026. (Iranian Presidency/Anadolu)

_{By: Atlas}

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the head of the European Council on Tuesday that Tehran has the "necessary will" to end the war with the United States and Israel — the most explicit statement from a senior Iranian official since the conflict began on February 28 that the country is looking for a way out.

The statement moved markets. U.S. stocks rose on the news. But the conditions attached to it suggest the gap between what Iran wants and what Washington is offering remains wide.

"We possess the necessary will to end this conflict, provided that essential conditions are met — especially the guarantees required to prevent repetition of the aggression," Pezeshkian said during a phone call with European Council President António Costa, according to his office.

The key word is guarantees. Iran has been attacked twice during diplomatic engagements with the United States — most recently the February 28 strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while American envoys were in contact with Tehran. Pezeshkian cited that history directly. "Iran was attacked twice during negotiations, proving that America does not believe in diplomacy," he said.

Costa responded by urging Iran to de-escalate. "The current situation in the Middle East is extremely dangerous," he wrote on social media afterward. He called on Iran to stop attacking countries in the region and to engage with the United Nations on restoring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Diplomatic Back Channel

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi provided more detail on the state of contacts with Washington in an interview Tuesday. He confirmed that he is receiving messages directly from U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, either through intermediaries or direct communication. But he drew a firm line between exchanging messages and negotiating.

"I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations," Araghchi said. "There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran."

He said Iran has "never had a good experience" negotiating with the United States, pointing to the 2015 nuclear deal — the JCPOA — which Trump withdrew from during his first term. "We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero."

Araghchi also clarified that Iran has not formally responded to the 15-point ceasefire proposal Washington sent through Pakistani intermediaries last week. "Nor have we submitted any proposals or conditions," he said. Iranian state media had reported earlier that Tehran had issued a five-point counterproposal, but Araghchi appeared to walk that back.

On the Strait of Hormuz, Araghchi said the waterway lies within Iranian and Omani territorial waters and that Iran was within its rights to close it to hostile nations during wartime. He said after the war, the strait's future security would be a matter for Iran and Oman to decide, but suggested it could again become "a peaceful waterway."

Washington Says Talks Are Real

The White House has maintained for days that negotiations with Iran are progressing, regardless of Tehran's public denials. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that talks are "continuing and going well" and that what Iran says publicly differs sharply from what it communicates privately.

"Despite all of the public posturing you hear from the regime and false reporting, talks are continuing and going well," Leavitt told reporters. "What is said publicly is, of course, much different than what's being communicated to us privately."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reinforced that message Tuesday but paired it with a warning. Speaking at a Pentagon briefing, he described the negotiations as "very real" and "gaining strength," then added: "The upcoming days will be decisive. Iran knows that, and there's almost nothing they can militarily do about it."

Asked whether ground troops could be deployed, Hegseth declined to rule it out. "You can't fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground," he said.

Trump himself weighed in Tuesday with a phone interview in which he said Iran's military capacity had been "largely weakened" and that the conflict would be short-lived. "We won't stay there very long," he said. He suggested the Strait of Hormuz would "automatically reopen" and placed the burden on countries dependent on the waterway to secure their own access.

In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump lashed out at allies who have refused to help the U.S. force the strait open. "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us," he wrote. "Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil."

Threats From Both Sides Continue

Even as both governments signaled openness to ending the war, the fighting showed no signs of stopping. Heavy strikes hit Iran on Tuesday, including in Isfahan and Tehran, where residents reported explosions and power outages. Iranian state media said airstrikes had damaged a pharmaceutical plant producing cancer drugs and anesthetics and a Shiite religious center in Zanjan. Iran's government said U.S.-Israeli attacks had hit more than 105,000 civilian sites across the country, including over 83,000 residential units.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps issued one of its most provocative warnings yet, threatening to retaliate against 18 major American technology companies — including Google, Meta, Apple, Intel, Tesla, and Palantir — if further Iranian leaders are killed in targeted assassinations. The IRGC said the firms were "complicit" in previous killings and warned they "should expect the destruction of their relevant units in exchange for every assassination in Iran."

Trump had warned Monday that if Iran did not agree to a deal, U.S. forces would "obliterate" all of its oil wells, its main Kharg Island export terminal, and possibly its water desalination plants.

Iran continued firing missiles and drones at Israel, Gulf Arab states, and U.S.-allied positions in the region. Explosions were heard Tuesday in Dubai. Two people were wounded near the Saudi capital Riyadh when air defenses intercepted a drone. Kuwait's state oil company reported that one of its tankers caught fire off Dubai after what it called "a direct and malicious Iranian attack."

The Economic Toll Keeps Climbing

The war's economic damage is now registering globally. The average U.S. gasoline price passed $4 a gallon on Tuesday, the highest since 2022. Indonesia announced fuel rationing. The EU urged member states to reduce domestic consumption of oil, diesel, and jet fuel. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said in Brussels: "The more you can do to save oil, especially diesel, especially jet fuel, the better we are off."

The UN Development Programme estimated this week that one month of war has cost Arab countries up to $194 billion. Even a "short but intense" conflict, the agency warned, would produce major increases in poverty rates across the region, particularly in Sudan, Yemen, and Lebanon.

Iran's own government spokesperson said 249 women and 216 children have been killed in the strikes, all civilians, including 17 children under the age of five. Iran's total death toll has surpassed 1,340. At least 13 U.S. service members and 16 Israelis have been killed. More than 1,200 have died in Lebanon.

Pezeshkian framed Iran's position as one of both strength and openness. "The resistance shown by the army, along with the national unity shown by the Iranian people during the war, are among the most important factors that helped the country overcome the current critical circumstances," he said during a cabinet meeting Monday.

Whether the "necessary will" he described Tuesday translates into formal negotiations depends on whether Washington offers the kind of guarantees Tehran says it requires — and whether Trump, who started this war during a round of diplomacy, is willing to bind himself to terms that would prevent the next one. For now, both sides are talking about talking while the bombs keep falling.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Trump Pushes For 15 Point Ceasefire Plan With Iran

• SCOTUS Hints At Trump Policy Approval For Asylum Seekers

• NASA Unveils $20 Billion Plan For Permanent U.S. Moon Base

Trump Pushes For 15 Point Ceasefire Plan With Iran

President Trump (AP)

_{By: Atlas}

The Trump administration has submitted a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran through Pakistani intermediaries, opening what could become the first structured diplomatic track since the war began on February 28. The proposal was delivered as fighting continued across the region, with Iranian missiles striking Israel and Gulf Arab states while U.S. and Israeli warplanes hit targets inside Iran.

President Trump said Tuesday that the United States is "in negotiations right now" with Iran and that Tehran had made a significant concession related to the Strait of Hormuz. He described an unspecified gift from Iran that arrived earlier in the day, calling it "worth a tremendous amount of money" and a sign that Washington is "dealing with the right people."

Iran has publicly denied that any direct talks are taking place. But shortly after Trump's remarks, Tehran circulated a message through the International Maritime Organization assuring safe passage for "non-hostile vessels" through the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes. Iran had largely blockaded the strait in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes, sending global energy prices sharply higher over the past month.

What the Plan Contains

The 15-point proposal represents the most sweeping set of demands Washington has put to Tehran since the war started. At its center is a full rollback of Iran's nuclear program. The terms call for halting all uranium enrichment inside Iran, transferring existing enriched uranium stockpiles to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and decommissioning key nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. IAEA inspectors would receive unrestricted access to all sites.

Iran would also formally commit to never pursuing nuclear weapons — a pledge it made once before under the 2015 agreement that Trump withdrew from during his first term.

Beyond the nuclear file, the plan extends into regional security. Iran would be required to abandon its proxy strategy and cease funding or arming militias across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz would reopen to commercial traffic. Decisions on Iran's ballistic missile program would be deferred, though any retained capability would be restricted to defensive purposes.

In exchange, the proposal offers comprehensive sanctions relief, including removal of the snapback mechanism that allowed automatic reimposition of U.N. sanctions. The framework also includes Western support for developing a civilian nuclear program centered on the Bushehr reactor, a site that predates the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Trump told reporters he had sent the plan and that "it all starts with, they cannot have a nuclear weapon." He later claimed Iran had already agreed to this demand. Tehran has made no such public statement.

Pakistan Offers to Host, Israel Caught Off Guard

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote on social media that Islamabad is prepared to "facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks" to end the war. Multiple officials from Pakistan, Egypt, and the Gulf confirmed that the United States had agreed in principle to participate in Pakistan-hosted negotiations, though mediators were still working to bring Iran to the table.

Diplomats familiar with the discussions said talks could begin as early as next week. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to represent the U.S. side. Trump added that Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials were also involved.

Israeli officials were reportedly caught off guard by the ceasefire proposal. Israel has advocated for continuing the military campaign against Iran and gave no indication it planned to change course. Israeli military spokesman Effie Defrin said his country's war plan was "unchanged" and that operations would continue "to deepen the damage and remove existential threats."

The disconnect between Washington and Jerusalem is notable. Trump started this war alongside Israel with the massive February 28 strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day. Now, barely four weeks in, the U.S. appears to be exploring an exit while its partner presses forward.

More Troops Heading to the Region

The diplomatic push has not slowed the military buildup. At least 3,000 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division are expected to deploy to the Middle East in the coming days, joining roughly 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region. The Pentagon is also sending a pair of Marine Expeditionary Units that will add approximately 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors.

The 82nd Airborne is the Army's premier rapid-response force, trained to parachute into contested territory on short notice. The Marine deployments have fueled speculation that the U.S. may attempt to seize Kharg Island, the hub of Iran's oil export network. American warplanes bombed the island's defenses more than a week ago but left its oil infrastructure intact. Iran has threatened to mine the Persian Gulf if it detects an imminent landing operation.

The Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank, noted that Trump's decision to delay a threatened strike on Iran's power grid could be aimed at buying time for Marine forces to arrive in theater. But the center also acknowledged that "Trump could be actively seeking an offramp."

Markets React, Then Pull Back

Talk of negotiations briefly rattled oil markets and lifted equities. Brent crude fell roughly 6 percent to $98.30 a barrel in early Asian trading on Wednesday, while S&P 500 futures rose 0.9 percent and European futures gained 1.2 percent. Stock markets in Australia, South Korea, and Japan climbed approximately 2 percent.

The relief was short-lived. Brent nudged back above $100 a barrel by Tuesday's close, still up nearly 40 percent since the war began. Analysts noted that markets remain hostage to the headline cycle.

"The market is trading the headlines at the moment," said Kerry Craig, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. "There are still unknowns about where this actually goes from here and whether there's anything material in terms of a ceasefire."

Iran's death toll has surpassed 1,500, its Health Ministry has reported. In Israel, 16 people have been killed. At least 13 U.S. service members have died. Strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million. The war's fourth week opened with no ceasefire in place, a 15-point wish list on the table, and both sides still firing.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Senior U.S. Counterterrorism Official Resigns Over Iran War

• Analysis: North Koreans Infiltrating Remote Work Jobs

• Dozens Dead And Over 100 Wounded In Nigerian Suicide Bombings

Senior U.S. Counterterrorism Official Resigns Over Iran War

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Dec. 11th 2025 (Tom Williams - Cq-roll Call, Inc. - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, becoming the first senior Trump administration official to leave his post over the war in Iran. In a public resignation letter, Kent wrote that he could not “in good conscience” continue serving while the United States remained engaged in the conflict. He argued that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States and said the war marked a break from the foreign policy principles President Donald Trump had campaigned on in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Kent’s departure was significant not only because of his rank but because of the office he led. The National Counterterrorism Center was established after the September 11 attacks and serves as the government’s central hub for terrorism analysis, interagency coordination, and maintenance of terrorist watchlist functions. As its director, Kent occupied one of the most senior positions in the U.S. intelligence structure, reporting through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

His resignation exposed a direct conflict inside the administration over the justification for the Iran war. The White House, congressional allies, and senior intelligence officials immediately rejected Kent’s argument, insisting that President Trump acted on what they described as strong evidence of an imminent Iranian threat.

What Kent Said in His Resignation

Kent’s resignation letter was unusually direct for a serving intelligence official. He wrote that the administration had been drawn into war by pressure from Israel and what he described as a powerful lobby in the United States. He further argued that senior Israeli officials and members of the American media had created an “echo chamber” that persuaded Trump to abandon his earlier “America First” approach and accept the premise that Iran posed an imminent danger requiring immediate military action.

He framed the decision as part of a broader pattern of U.S. entanglement in Middle Eastern wars, stating that such conflicts had consumed American lives and resources without producing corresponding national benefit. Kent said Trump had previously understood that dynamic and had, in his first term, used military force in more limited ways that did not draw the United States into a prolonged regional war. In the letter, he pointed specifically to the killing of Qassem Soleimani and the campaign against ISIS as examples of what he viewed as focused, non-open-ended uses of force.

Kent also tied his opposition to personal experience. A former Green Beret with 11 combat deployments, he has long been identified with the anti-interventionist wing of Trump-aligned national security politics. His wife, Shannon Kent, a Navy intelligence officer, was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria. In his statement, he cited that loss as part of the reason he opposed sending another generation of Americans into a war he believed was not justified by a direct threat to the country.

How the White House and Congress Responded

The administration’s response was immediate and sharp. President Trump dismissed Kent’s departure publicly, saying it was “a good thing” and describing him as weak on security. Trump said that if a senior official did not regard Iran as a threat, that person did not belong in the administration.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent’s letter contained false claims. She stated that Trump had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was preparing to attack the United States first, and that the president’s decision to act was based on intelligence compiled from multiple sources. Her statement rejected Kent’s suggestion that the operation had been driven by foreign pressure and argued instead that it was designed to reduce the risk to American troops and installations.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose office oversaw Kent’s work, did not endorse his claims. She stated that the determination of what constitutes an imminent threat rests with the commander in chief and said Trump had concluded, after reviewing the available information, that Iran posed such a threat. Her statement was notable for emphasizing presidential authority rather than offering her own public judgment on the underlying intelligence.

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the administration’s case and said lawmakers in the “Gang of Eight” had received intelligence briefings showing that Iran was moving quickly toward greater missile capability and potential nuclear capacity. Johnson said he believed that if Trump had waited, American troops and facilities would likely have suffered mass casualties.

Not everyone in Congress agreed. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there was no credible evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that would justify rushing into another war of choice in the Middle East. His statement did not embrace Kent’s broader politics, but it aligned with Kent on the central question of whether the administration had met the threshold for imminent self-defense.

Kent’s Place Inside the Administration

Kent’s resignation drew attention because he was not a peripheral figure. He had been confirmed by the Senate less than a year earlier and had strong ties to the faction inside Trump’s orbit that is skeptical of foreign military intervention. He was seen as politically close to Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance, both of whom have, at various times, been associated with resistance to regime-change wars and prolonged overseas campaigns.

Before leading the NCTC, Kent had worked in military and intelligence roles and later became a Republican congressional candidate in Washington state. He lost two races for the House of Representatives but built a national profile through conservative media and anti-interventionist politics. Trump had praised him when nominating him, saying he had spent his adult life hunting terrorists and criminals and would help keep America safe.

At the same time, Kent was also a controversial figure. Democrats opposed his confirmation because of prior ties to far-right activists and conspiracy-linked rhetoric. Reports tied him to figures and movements on the far right, although he later rejected some of those associations. That background meant his resignation landed differently across Washington: to critics of the war, it was a notable internal rebuke; to others, it was easier to dismiss because of Kent’s record and political baggage.

There were also signs that Kent’s standing inside the administration had already deteriorated before he quit. One senior administration official described him as a known leaker who had been excluded from intelligence briefings months earlier and said he had not been part of Iran war planning or core discussions. Another official disputed part of that characterization but acknowledged White House complaints about him. Those accounts suggest Kent’s resignation, while politically significant, may have followed a period of internal isolation rather than a direct role in operational decision-making.

Why the Resignation Matters

Kent’s departure matters because it crystallized the central dispute over the Iran war: whether the administration acted in response to a genuine imminent threat or whether it chose to enter a conflict without meeting that standard. That question has implications beyond internal politics. Under both constitutional and international law frameworks, the imminence of a threat is central to how preemptive military action is justified.

The resignation also came at a sensitive moment for the intelligence community. Senior national security officials were already scheduled to testify before Congress on global threats, and the Iran war had become the dominant issue in Washington’s intelligence oversight discussions. Kent’s exit ensured that those hearings would take place under the shadow of a senior official publicly rejecting the administration’s core rationale for war.

Even without changing policy, the resignation added a formal internal dissent record to a war that had already divided parts of Trump’s political coalition. Kent was the highest-ranking official to step down over the conflict, and his letter created a durable point of reference for those arguing that the administration’s public case had not matched the evidence.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Destroys 16 Iranian Mine Laying Vessels

• South Korea President Voices Displeasure Over U.S. Military Assets Shifting Away From The Country

• Analysis: Iran War Threatens Another Refugee Crisis

U.S. Destroys 16 Iranian Mine Laying Vessels

President Trump in Miami on March 9th 2026

_{By: Atlas}

The United States military announced Tuesday it had eliminated 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz as Operation Epic Fury entered its 11th day, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declaring it the most intense day of strikes against Iran since the war began on February 28. The announcement came amid growing concern over the fate of the world's most critical oil shipping corridor and a sharp exchange of threats between Washington and Tehran over who controls access to it.

U.S. Central Command released the figure alongside unclassified footage of some of the vessels, confirming that the minelayers were among multiple Iranian naval assets taken out during Tuesday's operations. The Pentagon separately said it had also struck Iranian mine storage facilities. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said the U.S. military has now sunk more than 50 Iranian ships since the start of the war, describing the effort as making "substantial progress toward destroying the navy" and adding that the hunt for mine-laying vessels would continue.

"We're crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force," Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters. The most bombers. The most strikes."

The Minelayer Threat and the Strait

The strikes on the mine-laying vessels followed a tense sequence of social media exchanges in which President Donald Trump said he had no reports of Iran actually deploying explosives in the Strait of Hormuz, but warned that if mines were placed, he wanted them "removed, IMMEDIATELY." Trump initially said the U.S. had "completely destroyed" 10 inactive mine-laying vessels, with Central Command later revising the number upward to 16.

"Additionally, we are using the same technology and missile capabilities deployed against drug traffickers to permanently eliminate any boat or ship attempting to mine the Hormuz Strait. They will be dealt with quickly and violently," Trump wrote on social media. "BEWARE!"

The strait, roughly 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, is the passage through which approximately 20 percent of the world's traded oil and natural gas normally flows. Since the start of the war, shipping traffic through the channel has effectively halted. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard declared it would "not allow the export of even a single liter of oil from the region to the hostile side and its partners until further notice." A senior Revolutionary Guard official had previously stated that Iran would fire on any vessel attempting to pass.

The economic stakes were substantial. Saudi Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser confirmed that tankers were being rerouted to avoid the strait, and that the company's east-west pipeline would reach its full capacity of 7 million barrels per day flowing to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. "The situation at the Strait of Hormuz is blocking sizable volumes of oil from the whole region," he said. "If this takes a long time, that will have serious impact on the global economy."

Market Response and the Reinsurance Play

Oil prices remained volatile throughout the day but retreated from the near-$120-a-barrel peak hit earlier in the week. Brent crude ended the day down more than 5 percent at $88.03 a barrel after Trump suggested on Monday that the war could end "soon." West Texas Intermediate dropped more than 7 percent to around $84 a barrel.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent Tuesday as investors continued to monitor developments in the strait. One energy analyst described the market outlook as "binary" — either the strait reopens and the risk premium unwinds sharply, or it stays shut and the world faces what he called "the largest supply disruption in modern history."

The Trump administration moved to provide financial cushion for the shipping industry, with the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. announcing $20 billion in rolling reinsurance to cover shipping companies operating in the Gulf against financial losses tied to the conflict. The U.S. Navy has so far declined to provide direct escorts for commercial tankers, with officials citing unacceptable risk levels, despite Trump's public statements that such escorts were available whenever needed. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged Tuesday that no escorts had yet occurred while calling them "an option."

Casualties and the War's Broader Toll

Tuesday's operations unfolded as the Pentagon disclosed the full scope of non-fatal U.S. casualties for the first time since the war began. About 140 American service members have been wounded, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, adding that "the vast majority" of those injuries were minor and that 108 had already returned to duty. Eight service members remain severely injured. Seven Americans have been killed.

Caine told reporters that U.S. forces have now struck more than 5,000 targets inside Iran since the operation began. Iran's ballistic missile attacks have declined 90 percent since the opening days of the war, and one-way drone strikes have fallen by 83 percent, according to the Pentagon. U.S. bombers have dropped "dozens" of 2,000-pound GPS-guided penetrating weapons on deeply buried missile launchers in Iran's south, and several Iranian drone manufacturing facilities have been destroyed.

The broader human toll continues to grow across the region. At least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran, more than 480 in Lebanon, and 11 in Israel, according to officials in those countries. In Lebanon, where Israel resumed major strikes after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on March 2, the death toll has climbed steadily, with the U.N. refugee agency reporting that more than 667,000 people had registered as displaced — an increase of over 100,000 in a single day — and that more than 85,000, mostly Syrians, had crossed into neighboring Syria.

Iran's Defiance and International Pressure

Iranian leaders offered no signals of a shift in posture. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf wrote on social media that Iran was "definitely not looking for a ceasefire." Ali Larijani, a top security official, posted a warning addressed to Trump on the same platform, stating that "even those bigger than you couldn't eliminate Iran." Iran's Revolutionary Guard issued its own statement, saying it alone would "determine the end of the war" and dismissing Trump's comments about a quick conclusion as "nonsense."

Germany's foreign minister, visiting Jerusalem — the first European ministerial visit to Israel since the war began — assessed that Tehran was "not ready for a diplomatic solution."

G7 leaders scheduled an emergency videoconference for Wednesday to address the energy consequences of the conflict, with France — which holds the rotating G7 presidency — confirming that the talks would focus on the energy situation and potential measures to soften its global economic impact. The International Energy Agency held its own emergency meeting of member states earlier the same day to assess oil supply security and weigh a coordinated release of emergency petroleum reserves.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Spain Splits Over U.S. Strikes, Trump Threatens Trade Cutoff

• Analysis: China Offers Little More Than Moral Support To Iran Following Strikes

• India And Canada Make Landmark Agreement

Spain Splits Over U.S. Strikes, Trump Threatens Trade Cutoff

President Donald Trump on March 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee - Getty Images)

_{By: Atlas}

The joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran opened a new front in transatlantic relations Tuesday, as President Trump threatened to sever all trade ties with Spain following Madrid's refusal to allow American forces to use jointly operated military bases on Spanish soil. The confrontation, which unfolded publicly during Trump's Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, added a bilateral economic dimension to what is already the most significant U.S. military operation in the Middle East in years.

Spain's position placed it at direct odds with Washington at a moment when most of Europe, whatever its reservations about the legality of the strikes, was careful to avoid a direct clash with the Trump administration. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, one of the last prominent left-leaning leaders in Europe, had condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran as an "unjustifiable, dangerous military intervention" in violation of international law. His government then followed words with action, instructing officials to deny any use of American-accessible bases in southern Spain in connection with operations against Iran.

Spain's Decision and the Legal Basis Behind It

The refusal was not ad hoc. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares made Madrid's position explicit on Sunday: "Spanish bases are not being used for this operation, and they will not be used for anything not included in the agreement with the United States or for anything that is not in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."

The United States maintains access to two key installations in Spain — Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base — under a long-standing bilateral defense cooperation agreement. Under the terms of that arrangement, Spain retains sovereignty over the bases, and any use beyond the scope of the existing agreement requires Madrid's explicit authorization. Combat operations or offensive strikes launched from Spanish territory fall into that category. After Spain made its position clear, the U.S. relocated 15 aircraft, including refueling tankers, from the two bases.

Sánchez framed the decision in terms of international law and regional stability. "We reject the unilateral military action by the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order," he wrote on X. "We cannot afford another prolonged and devastating war in the Middle East."

Trump's Response and the Trade Threat

The reaction from Washington came Tuesday, during Trump's bilateral meeting with Merz. Trump, who spent several minutes during the session expressing frustration with European allies over Iran, directed his sharpest comments at Spain.

"Spain has been terrible," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "In fact, I told Scott [Bessent] to cut off all dealings with Spain."

He did not stop there. "We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain," he said, adding that he considered Spain's stance "unfriendly" and its leadership deficient. He also returned to a longstanding grievance: Spain is the only NATO member that declined to agree to the alliance's 5 percent of GDP defense spending target. "They wanted to keep it at 2% and they don't pay the 2%," Trump said.

Trump claimed broad executive authority to move forward, telling reporters: "All business having to do with Spain — I have the right to stop it. Embargoes — do anything I want with it." He turned directly to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who were present in the room, asking for their assessments. Bessent said the Supreme Court had reaffirmed the president's ability to implement an embargo and that the USTR and Commerce Department would begin the necessary investigations. Greer was more measured, saying only: "We're going to talk about it with you. We know you can use it, and if you need to use it to assure national and economic security, we'll do it."

The Legal and Structural Obstacles

Whether Trump can actually impose a full trade embargo on Spain as a standalone action is far from settled. The European Union negotiates trade agreements on behalf of all 27 member states as a bloc, which means any U.S. attempt to target Spain individually runs directly into the existing EU-U.S. trade framework. Merz addressed this point bluntly after his meeting with Trump: "I said that Spain is a member of the European Union and we negotiate about tariffs with the United States only together or not at all. There is no way to treat Spain particularly badly."

The European Commission reiterated that position. "The Commission will always ensure that the interests of the European Union are fully protected," a Commission spokesperson said.

Legal scholars raised additional hurdles. Jennifer Hillman, a trade law professor at Georgetown University, said the Supreme Court's recent ruling did not specifically address the president's authority to impose a trade embargo under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. While Trump could theoretically do so, he would have to formally declare Spain an "unusual and extraordinary" threat to the United States — a designation that, Hillman noted, would go well beyond any prior emergency declaration. Peter Shane, an adjunct law professor at New York University, put it more directly: "It's hard to see how Spain denying us the use of air bases on its territory for us to launch an attack on Iran poses 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' to our national security or foreign policy."

Total goods trade between the U.S. and Spain reached roughly $47 billion in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The U.S. ran a trade surplus with Spain of approximately $4.8 billion that year, with U.S. exports of $26.1 billion and imports of $21.3 billion. Spain's top exports to the United States include pharmaceutical products, olive oil, auto parts, steel, and chemicals. Spain's government said Tuesday that it has the resources to absorb the impact of any trade embargo and will continue to push for free trade and economic cooperation with its partners.

The UK and the Broader Strain With European Allies

Spain was not the only NATO ally to draw Trump's criticism Tuesday. The president also trained his frustration on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had denied Washington the use of Diego Garcia — a strategically significant base in the Indian Ocean — for the initial wave of strikes on Iran. Starmer later amended that position to allow limited use of the base specifically for missions targeting Iran's missile capabilities, but his earlier refusal drew a direct rebuke from Trump.

"This is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with," Trump said. He called the U.K. "very, very uncooperative" and criticized Starmer's government separately for agreeing to transfer control of the Chagos Islands — home to the Diego Garcia base — to Mauritius.

Starmer addressed Parliament on Monday and defended his position without equivocation: "This government does not believe in regime change from the skies. It is my duty to judge what is in Britain's national interest. That is what I have done. And I stand by it."

The strain marks a notable shift in Anglo-American relations. Lew Lukens, a senior partner at Signum Global Advisors and former acting U.S. ambassador in London, described the relationship as being at its lowest point in recent memory. "Probably have to go back to when Reagan invaded Grenada without giving Thatcher a heads up," Lukens said, while also expressing doubt that Trump would ultimately follow through on economic retaliation against the UK. "At the end of the day, the US needs UK defense cooperation and intelligence support as it carries out its strikes against Iran," he noted.

Germany's Merz, by contrast, emerged from the meeting in a notably different position. Trump singled out Germany as having "been great" in its response to the Iran operation — a reversal from earlier tensions earlier in his second term and a reflection of Merz's more accommodating posture toward the administration. Merz agreed with Trump that Spain needed to raise its defense spending to comply with NATO commitments, while making clear that any trade measures against Madrid would have to navigate the EU's collective trade framework.

Good morning everyone,

I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Trump Delivers The 2026 State Of The Union

• German Chancellor Heads To China, Trade & Security Talks Commence

• Pentagon Delivers Ultimatum To Anthropic

Trump Delivers The 2026 State Of The Union

President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2026. (Jessica Koscielniak - Pool via Reuters)

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump stood before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night and delivered what became the longest State of the Union address in American history, clocking in at roughly one hour and 47 minutes. The speech covered immigration enforcement, tariffs, the economy, foreign policy, prescription drug costs, and a series of new domestic proposals — a list long enough that Trump had warned the audience beforehand: "It's going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about."

His previous longest address, delivered last year in what was technically not a State of the Union but a joint address to Congress, ran about one hour and 39 minutes. None of the four speeches from his first term exceeded one hour and 22 minutes.

The chamber was not entirely full. More than 50 congressional Democrats had already announced they would boycott the event. During the speech itself, more than 10 additional Democrats walked out, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, both of whom heckled the president directly from the floor, shouting that he was lying over comments he made about immigration and corruption. Reps. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Lauren Underwood of Illinois, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas were among those who also left before the speech concluded. When Trump finished, the remaining Democrats exited quickly while Republicans gave a standing ovation.

What Trump Said on the Economy

Trump framed the speech around what he called a "transformation like no one has ever seen before, and a turnaround for the ages." He pointed to economic indicators his administration considers favorable — rising wages, lower gas prices, falling core inflation, declining interest rates, and the stock market reaching all-time highs during his second term.

He announced that the federal government would match Americans' 401(k) contributions by up to $1,000 for one year, a new initiative he did not detail further beyond the announcement. He also called on Congress to permanently ban Wall Street investment firms from purchasing single-family homes in bulk. "Homes are for people, not corporations," Trump said.

On prescription drugs, Trump said his administration had acted where others had not: "I am ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs. Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could. I got it done."

He highlighted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's elimination of taxes on the first $25,000 of tip income, citing a waitress named Megan Hemhouser, one of his invited guests, as a direct beneficiary. He also introduced what he called "rate payer protection pledges" — agreements with major technology companies building AI data centers to cover their own electricity costs, which he said would help prevent utility price increases for consumers.

Immigration and Border Enforcement

Trump devoted substantial time to the border, declaring it "the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far." He cited the drop in catch-and-release of illegal immigrants, which regularly exceeded 100,000 per month under the previous administration and has been at zero for at least eight consecutive months, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Border encounters fell to fewer than 31,000 in December 2025 — a 92 percent decline from the same period a year earlier. Trump attributed the reduction to his administration's declaration of a border emergency, which blocked new asylum claims and removed the primary incentive for illegal crossings.

"We will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and work hard to maintain our country," he said, drawing a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

He also used the speech to address what he described as fraud in the welfare system, calling out cases in Minnesota involving dozens of Somali immigrants who had been convicted or charged.

On crime, Trump said his administration had overseen the largest reduction in homicide rates on record. Violent crime fell across major cities, with robberies down 20 percent, murders down 19 percent, and aggravated assaults down 10 percent compared to 2024. He announced that Vice President JD Vance would lead what he described as "the war on fraud" going forward.

Tariffs, Foreign Policy, and the DHS Shutdown

The speech came days after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as the basis for his tariff regime. Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10 percent global tariff under separate statutory authorities before delivering the address. He defended his approach directly, saying, "Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars."

Four Supreme Court justices attended the speech, including three who had voted against the tariffs. Trump shook hands with each of them as he made his way into the chamber.

On foreign policy, Trump addressed ongoing tensions with Iran — where his administration has assembled the largest U.S. military presence in the Middle East in decades — and the Russia-Ukraine war, which entered its fifth year this week. He did not announce a resolution to either situation.

He also called on Congress to fully restore funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which has been caught in a partial government shutdown. "Tonight, I am demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security and homeland security of the United States," he said.

The Democratic Response

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democratic response following Trump's address. She argued that the administration's economic policies were not delivering the relief working families needed, and pushed back on Trump's characterizations of his first year in office. She did not offer a detailed alternative policy platform, focusing instead on healthcare costs, housing affordability, and what she described as the administration's approach to governance.

The boycott by more than 50 House Democrats before the speech and the mid-address walkouts by others reflected a party still sorting out how to respond to Trump's second term. At roughly 30 million viewers expected to watch the speech, the State of the Union gave Trump one of his largest audiences outside an election year — and one his party used to make the case directly to independent and working-class voters that will again be central to the November midterms.