Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“It is also important to realize that each great power, again in its own way, is an imperial one. Russian historical imperialism (going back to the conquests of the Romanov dynasty) was obviously evident in Ukraine. Chinese historical imperialism (going back at least to the conquest of the Qing dynasty) is evident in its longing to rule Taiwan. As for the United States, since the end of World War II, given its globe-spanning economic and military power, it has been an empire in all but name. Thus, the decline of the great powers signals another death knell for the stabilizing virtues of imperialism and the relative political order it brings—which go back to the dawn of history, however out of fashion imperialism has been since the second half of the 20th century.”

But, because the declines of the three great powers are relative to one another, there will be twists and turns in this process. For example, because Russia is declining at a faster rate than China, China’s leverage over Russia has increased. This has led to Russia becoming a sphere of Chinese influence, as China extracts hydrocarbons from Russia at bargain-basement prices, overwhelms Russian influence in former Soviet Central Asia, and so forth. China, in other words, because of Russia’s weakening position, has gone from being a Pacific and Asian power to becoming a Eurasian one. For most of history the super-continent of Eurasia was too big to have any graspable meaning. But as I wrote in The Revenge of Geography (2012) and The Return of Marco Polo’s World (2018), the very shrinkage of the earth through geography has created a situation where Eurasia is suddenly imaginable in geopolitical terms. China’s emergence as a Eurasian power, encompassing Russia, is only an early sign of this.”

— Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan

https://a.co/10PYp20

"A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself."

– Alexander Graham Bell

"Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power."

– Jon Meacham

1. U.S. Strike on Iran Began With a Ruse

2. U.S. Officials Assess Strikes on Iran's Nuclear Sites

3. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine Hold a Press Conference

4. Trump Keeps His Promise on Iran. The World Is Safer for It.

5. Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.

6. A Cornered Iran Gives Few Clues on Response to Bombings

7. U.S. Investigates How Much of Iran’s Nuclear Program Was Destroyed—And How Much Remains

8. What Happens If Iran’s Regime Collapses?

9. Did Iran Just Sneak Out Critical Nuclear Material from Fordow?

10. Regime Change in Iran? History Says Unlikely

11. Words as Weapons: The Strategic Power of Chinese Slogans in Modern Propaganda

12. The Meaning of Drone-Enabled Infantry Striking Beyond Line of Sight

13. Red Lines in Orbit: Deterrence, Sovereignty, and the Risk of Escalation in Space Conflict

14. Iran threatens US bases in response to strikes on nuclear sites

15. Iran Update Special Report, June 22, 2025, Evening Edition

16. Xi Jinping’s Costly Inheritance

17. Europe’s Two-Front War

18. Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D.

19. the butterfly effect and humility – unpredictability and linkages by Dr. Cynthia Watson

1. U.S. Strike on Iran Began With a Ruse

Sun Tzu: "All warfare is based on deception."

Perhaps noisy but not too noisy.

Excerpts:

Israeli officials had been optimistic for days that the U.S. would soon join the offensive in Iran for the attack on Fordow, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Israeli security cabinet, the body that makes decisions on the war, convened on Saturday night to discuss and track the U.S. strikes, which they knew were going to take place in a matter of hours, this person said.

Israel didn’t want the Iranians to move centrifuges out of Fordow before the U.S. strike, this person said. For this reason, the timing of the strike was kept a closely held secret.

Some flight trackers now believe the B-2s made an intentionally noisy trip west so they could be tracked.

The group of B-2 bombers that split off to attack Iran from the east kept communications to a minimum, the Pentagon said in the briefing Sunday morning.

U.S. Strike on Iran Began With a Ruse

A feint to the west drew attention, while stealth bombers and submarines maneuvered for the attack

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-strike-on-iran-began-with-a-ruse-c7188cd2?st=kGuu5E&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Shelby Holliday

and Lara Seligman

Updated June 22, 2025 10:07 am ET

Pentagon Reveals Tactical Surprise of Iran Strikes: 'Operation Midnight Hammer'

Play video: Pentagon Reveals Tactical Surprise of Iran Strikes: 'Operation Midnight Hammer'

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine revealed the details of Operation Midnight Hammer, saying it ‘devastated the Iranian nuclear program.’ Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

Key Points

What's This?

U.S. B-2 bombers feigned a westward route over the Pacific, then attacked Iranian nuclear sites from the east.
President Trump said submarines joined the attack, striking key nuclear facilities; the goal was to create surprise.
Iranian state media claimed minor damage, while the U.S. said key facilities were ‘obliterated’ using bunker busters.

Saturday morning, flight trackers picked up a host of stealthy U.S. B-2 bombers that took off from their Air Force base in Missouri and headed west over the Pacific. It was a ruse.

Meanwhile, a group of B-2s quietly made their way east, going on to attack Iran’s most important nuclear sites, defense officials said. They hit well-defended facilities where giant U.S. bunker busters were thought to have the greatest chance of success. President Trump said U.S. submarines firing cruise missiles joined in the attack, striking other key nuclear facilities.

The move allowed the U.S. to get its bombers over Iran faster and with a lower risk of detection. The timing also helped hide the mission’s aim. In the past few days, Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether to attack to give diplomacy a chance to work. There had been no order given to ready a B-2 strike, officials said Saturday morning.

The net effect of the maneuvers and communications was the impression that Iran had more time before the bombs came.

“Decoy indeed,” one of the defense officials said of the westward feint that masked the bombers that carried out the attack. “‘Hiding’ them and preserving the element of surprise was critical.”

B-2 Spirit

Cost: $2.2 billion per aircraft in 2022 dollars

First flight: 1989

First delivered: 1993

Engines: Four General Electric F118-GE-100s

Top speed: High subsonic

Combat ceiling: 50,000 feet

Range: 6,900 miles without refueling

Weapons: Conventional and nuclear payloads

Base: Whiteman AFB, Mo.

At least nine of the 20 B-2 fleet were active on Saturday. The heavy stealth aircrafts dropped 12 out of the believed existing 20 GBU-57s over Fordow and 2 over Natanz nuclear facilities.

Crew total: Pilot and mission commander

17 ft.

Side view

Top view

69 ft.

172 ft.

Sources: U.S. officials; Northrop Grumman; Air Force

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Trump gave the final order to go ahead Saturday afternoon East Coast time at his private club in New Jersey.

“The goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” a senior administration official said of the timing of the president’s order.

The Pentagon confirmed the details of the ruse in a briefing Sunday morning in Washington, saying as one group of B-2 bombers headed to the west, another group quietly split off and headed east to attack Iran.

A B-2 bomber Photo: Zuma Press

“Tonight I can report to the world the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Trump said later Saturday from the White House.

Iranian state media said only minor damage to entrance tunnels was done, and the country’s Atomic Energy Organization said it would continue work on its nuclear program.

The U.S. bombers carried GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, bunker-busting U.S. bombs designed to destroy hardened underground targets. A dozen were dropped on Fordow, and another two were used against Natanz, while Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from submarines at Natanz and Isfahan, the defense official said.

It was the first time the GBU-57 had been used in war. The U.S. had produced around 20 of the giant munitions.

The U.S. strike represented the second time in the week-old conflict where Iran may have been misdirected at least in part by talk of diplomacy. Israel’s initial strike came days before U.S. and Iranian officials were to meet in Oman for a sixth round of nuclear talks.

Delivering the U.S. Strike on Iran's Nuclear Sites

B-2 Spirit

7 in main strike package

Additional in decoy package

MOP GBU-57

12 dropped on Fordow

2 dropped on Natanz

Assist planes

Specific model unknown

4 in strike package

U.S. submarine

Specific model unknown

Operating in the Middle East

Tomahawk land attack cruise missile

Over 24 launched at Isfahan

Note: Not to scale

Source: the Pentagon

Adrienne Tong/WSJ

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi complained of deception in the latest strike.

“We were in the middle of negotiations,” Aragchi said of the timing while speaking to reporters in Istanbul. Referring to the Trump administration, he said, “I think they have proved that they are not men of diplomacy and that they only understand the language of threat and force, and this is very unfortunate.”

The European talks ended without success, as Iran stuck to its insistence on retaining the right to enrich uranium, rejecting the core U.S. demand.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran during a news conference at the Pentagon. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Israeli officials had been optimistic for days that the U.S. would soon join the offensive in Iran for the attack on Fordow, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Israeli security cabinet, the body that makes decisions on the war, convened on Saturday night to discuss and track the U.S. strikes, which they knew were going to take place in a matter of hours, this person said.

Israel didn’t want the Iranians to move centrifuges out of Fordow before the U.S. strike, this person said. For this reason, the timing of the strike was kept a closely held secret.

Some flight trackers now believe the B-2s made an intentionally noisy trip west so they could be tracked.

The group of B-2 bombers that split off to attack Iran from the east kept communications to a minimum, the Pentagon said in the briefing Sunday morning.

Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

At least nine of the 20 B-2 fleet were active on Saturday. An earlier version of this article’s graphic incorrectly said 13 of 18 were active that day. (Corrected on June 22)

2. U.S. Officials Assess Strikes on Iran's Nuclear Sites

Weeks for BDA. That should not surprise us.

U.S. Officials Assess Strikes on Iran's Nuclear Sites

A full accounting of the damage could take weeks; Iran has signaled little interest in diplomacy

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-us-latest-news

Last Updated:

June 22, 2025 at 5:37 PM ET

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Photo: WSJ; Maxar Technologies

After the surprise U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, administration officials worked to assess the extent of the damage. Vice President JD Vance signaled that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium is still intact but also that the U.S. isn’t interested in destroying the regime.

An area of particular interest is the Fordow uranium-enrichment complex. Experts say it could take weeks to know how much damage was inflicted.

Iranian officials said they had minimized the impact from the U.S. strikes to their nuclear program, but the country's clerical leaders face a choice whether to hit back and risk expanding the war, or return to nuclear talks where they would likely have to cede to American demands.

To recap, the U.S. this weekend had hit three sites—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—in strikes involving 125 aircraft and a decoy. Washington said it has sent messages to Tehran urging Iran to engage in peace talks. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Oman joined the head of the United Nations in condemning the U.S. strikes.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he planned to fly to Moscow and would meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin tomorrow morning for consultations on how to proceed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was making progress toward destroying Iran's nuclear threat and ballistic missile threat. “We are moving step after step to achieve these goals. We are very, very close to completing them,” he said.

Trump on Sunday didn’t rule out backing a change in Iran's leadership, saying on social media, "...if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???"

Latest Updates

35 min ago

European Leaders Urge Iran Not to Take Action That Would ‘Destabilize the Region’

Suha Ma’ayeh

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he spoke with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron after the U.S. strikes on Iran, and all three urged Tehran “not to take any further action that could destabilize the region.”

The three leaders also reiterated their commitment to peace and stability for all countries in the region and affirmed their support for the security of Israel.

46 min ago

Trump: ‘Why Wouldn’t There Be a Regime Change?’

Tarini Parti

President Trump on Sunday didn’t rule out backing regime change in Iran. Prominent activists in the “Make America Great Again” movement have said in recent weeks they oppose the U.S pushing for regime change.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Trump said on Truth Social.

56 min ago

Iran's Response Hinges on What Military Capability It Has Left

Sudarsan Raghavan

Benoit Faucon

and

Summer Said

Iranian missiles fly toward Israel on Sunday. (Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)

A key question in gauging Iran’s possible response to the U.S. strikes is whether Iran has the military capability to expand the war after 10 days of blistering hits by Israel on its weapons systems, senior leaders and military infrastructure.

Although Iran continues to strike Israel, its arsenal of missiles is shrinking. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Israel has destroyed half of Iran’s missile launchers, making it harder to use those that remain.

“Iran, in a conventional contest, is in a much weaker position,” said Michael Singh, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But we do know that Iran has other capabilities, whether that’s cyber capabilities, terrorist proxies and so forth.”

The regional militias belonging to Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, which Tehran has built and supported for decades, have largely remained on the sidelines so far. But Yemen’s Houthi militia warned on Saturday that it would target U.S. warships and commercial ships in the Red Sea if the U.S. bombed Iran.

View Less

1 hour ago

Why Some Expect Tehran to Play It Safe in Responding

Sudarsan Raghavan

Benoit Faucon

and

Summer Said

A portrait of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Tehran earlier this year (Vahid Salemi/AP)

How might Iran respond to the U.S. strikes? Some analysts expect Tehran to play it relatively safe.

Based on past behavior, Iran could “harass shipping to boost oil prices, which could hurt the U.S. economy, especially under Trump,” said Europe-based Mostafa Pakzad, chairman of Pakzad Consulting, which advises foreign companies on Iranian geopolitics. In 2018, after President Trump took the U.S. out of a pact limiting Iran’s nuclear program and ordered an oil embargo on the country, Tehran attacked passing vessels using limpet mines in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s response to the January 2020 U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq offers further clues to its potential reaction.

Soleimani was widely seen as one of the most powerful men in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated by launching ballistic missiles at U.S. military bases in Iraq, wounding scores of U.S. troops but not killing any Americans.

View Less

3. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine Hold a Press Conference

Transcript

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine Hold a Press Conference

June 22, 2025

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4222543/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen/

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH: Well, thank you for joining us this morning. Last night, on President Trump's orders, US Central Command conducted a precision strike in the middle of the night against three nuclear facilities in Iran, Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, in order to destroy or severely degrade Iran's nuclear program, and as The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will demonstrate it was an incredible and overwhelming success. The order we received from our commander in chief was focused. It was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program. But it's worth noting the operation did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people. For the entirety of his time in office, President Trump has consistently stated, for over 10 years, that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon, full stop. Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran's nuclear program, and none could, until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back. When this President speaks, the world should listen and the U.S. Military, we can back it up. The most powerful military the world has ever known. No other country on planet Earth could have conducted the operation that the chairman is going to outline this morning. Not even close. Just like Soleimani found out in the first term Iran found out when POTUS says 60 days that he seeks peace and negotiation, he means 60 days of peace and negotiation otherwise that nuclear program, that nuclear capability, will not exist. He meant it. This is not the previous administration. President Trump said, no nukes. He seeks peace, and Iran should take that path. He sent out a Truth last night, saying this: any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight, signed the President of the United States, Donald J Trump. Iran would be smart to heed those words. He said it before, and he means it.

I want to give recognition to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff, General Eric Kurilla at CENTCOM, who did a phenomenal job. He and his staff, all of CENTCOM. Policy across the board. This was a joint effort, and across the Pentagon effort, I want to recognize the pilots who flew those bombers, who flew those fighters, who flew those refuelers. Warriors. I want to recognize the sailors on those destroyers, in those subs, on those carriers. Warriors, all of them. I want to recognize our soldiers doing air defense, base defense, QRF (quick reaction force) warriors, all of them, every American involved in this operation, performed flawlessly. And I want to give recognition to our allies in Israel as well. This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the President of the United States called. It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security. Our B-2s went in and out of downtown Tehran, not Tehran, excuse me, of these nuclear sites in and out and back without the world knowing at all. In that way, it was historic, a strike that included the longest B-2 Spirit bomber mission since 2001 and the first operational employment of the MOP, a massive ordinance penetrator. The mission demonstrated to the world the level of joint and allied integration that speak to the strength of our alliance and our joint forces. As President Trump has stated, the United States does not seek war, but let me be clear, we will act swiftly and decisively when our people, our partners or our interests are threatened. Iran should listen to the President of the United States and know that he means it, every word. I want to give congratulations to our commander in chief. It was an honor to watch him lead last night and throughout and to our great American warriors on this successful operation. God bless our troops. God bless America, and we give glory to God for his providence and continue to ask for his protection. I turn it over now to the chairman for specifics.

GENERAL DAN CAINE: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, thanks for recognizing all of our folks out there doing our nation's work. And nice to see everybody on this early Sunday morning. Last night, on the President's orders, US Central Command, under the command of General Eric Kurilla, executed Operation Midnight Hammer, a deliberate and precise strike against three Iranian nuclear facilities. This was a complex and high-risk mission carried out with exceptional skill and discipline by our joint force. I want to thank every service member, planner, operator, that made this mission possible. Their actions reflect the highest standards of the United States Armed Forces. This operation was designed to severely degrade Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure. It was planned and executed across multiple domains and theaters with coordination that reflects our ability to project power globally with speed and precision at the time and place of our nation's choosing. This was a highly classified mission with very few people in Washington knowing the timing or nature of this plan. I'll refer you to the graphic on the side as I walk you through some of the operational details.

At midnight Friday into Saturday morning, a large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental United States. As part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise, part of the package, proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy. A deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington and in Tampa. The main strike package comprised of seven B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, proceeded quietly to the east with minimal communications. Throughout the 18-hour flight into the target area, the aircraft completed multiple in-flight refuelings. Once over land, the B-2s linked up with escort and support aircraft in a complex, tightly timed maneuver requiring exact synchronization across multiple platforms in a narrow piece of airspace, all done with minimal communications.

This type of integration is exactly what our Joint Force does better than anyone else in the world. At approximately 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time last night, and just prior to the strike package entering Iran, a U.S. submarine in the Central Command Area of Responsibility launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets at Esfahan. As the Operation Midnight Hammer strike package entered Iranian airspace, the U.S. employed several deception tactics, including decoys as the fourth and fifth generation aircraft pushed out in front of the strike package at high altitude and high speed, sweeping in front of the package for enemy fighters and surface to air missile.

The strike package was supported by U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Space Force and U.S. European command. As the strike package approached Fordow and Natanz, the U.S. protection package employed high speed suppression weapons to ensure safe passage of the strike package with fighter assets employing preemptive suppressing fires against any potential Iranian surface to air threats.

We are currently unaware of any shots fired at the U.S. strike package on the way in. At approximately 6:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2:10 a.m. Iran time, the lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons on the first of several aim points at Fordow. As the President stated last night, the remaining bombers then hit their targets as well, with a total of 14 MOPs dropped against two nuclear target areas. All three Iranian nuclear infrastructure targets were struck between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m. Eastern time again. That's about 2:10 in the morning, local time in Iran. With the Tomahawk missiles being the last to strike at Esfahan to ensure we retain the element of surprise throughout the operation. Following weapons release, the Midnight Hammer strike, package exited Iranian airspace, and the package began its return home. We are unaware of any shots fired at the package on the way out.

Iran's fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran's surface to air missile systems did not see us. Throughout the mission, we retained the element of surprise. In total, U.S. forces employed approximately 75 precision guided weapons during this operation. This included, like the president stated last night, 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, marking the first ever operational use of this weapon.

I know that battle damage is of great interest. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction. More than 125 U.S. aircraft participated in this mission, including B-2 stealth bombers, multiple flights of fourth and fifth generation fighters, dozens and dozens of air refueling tankers, a guided missile submarine, and a full array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, as well as hundreds of maintenance and operational professionals.

As the secretary said, this was the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history, and the second longest B-2 mission ever flown, exceeded only by those in the days following 9/11. Well prior to the strike, General Kurilla elevated force protection measures across the region, especially in Iraq, Syria and the Gulf. Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice. We will defend ourselves the safety of our service members and civilians remains our highest priority.

This mission demonstrates the unmatched reach coordination and capability of the United States military. In just a matter of weeks, this went from strategic planning to global execution. This operation underscores the unmatched capabilities and global reach of the United States military. As the president clearly said last night, no other in the military, no other military in the world, could have done this. I join the president and the secretary in being incredibly proud of the air crews, naval forces, cyber operators, planners and support teams and commanders who made this mission possible. It is their skill, discipline and teamwork that makes this operation possible. I am particularly proud of our discipline related to operational security, something that was of great concern to the president, the Secretary, General, Kurilla and me, and we will continue to focus on this. As we stand here this morning, many assets are still airborne, and we have hundreds deployed. I ask that we keep our war fighters on their way home and our deployed service member in our thoughts. Our joint force remains ready to defend the United States our troops and our interests in the region. Thank you very much.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: We'll take a few questions. Phil.

Q? So is regime change off the table, Mr. Secretary and to the chairman, you said the battle damage assessment is still ongoing, but do you believe that some nuclear capability in Iran remains?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: This mission was not and has not been about regime change. The president authorized a precision operation to neutralize the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear program and the collective self-defense of our troops and our ally Israel.

GENERAL CAINE: Thanks for your question. I think BDA is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there. But thanks for the question.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Green. Green, no, behind you.

Q: Excuse me Mr. Secretary, can you tell me was there a particular moment when the president decided to pull the trigger on this operation where he said, now, president being, you know, something in the holster, now we're going to pull the trigger on.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: I would just say having the opportunity to witness his leadership, he was fully committed to the peace process. Wanted, wanted a negotiated outcome. Gave Iran every single opportunity, and unfortunately, was met by stonewalling, which is why he gave them plenty of time to continue to come to the table and give up enrichment, give up the nuclear program.

But there was a, I won't say, the particular moment. There was certainly a moment in time. A moment in time where he realized that it had to be a certain action taken in order to minimize the threat to us and our troops.

Q: General, you say that General Kurilla increased force protection in Iraq, Syria and Gulf in those areas. Were they given any advance warning the attacks were coming? And also, Mr. Secretary, when were congressional leaders notified? How long before the attacks took place?

GENERAL CAINE: Sir, to your first question. You know, the risk has clearly been rising over the last few weeks in the region, based on that and not a particular awareness of this operation, we've made smart decisions to minimize the risk to U.S. forces in the region.

Q: So there was no advance warning?

GENERAL CAINE: No sir

Q: Inaudible

SECRETARY HEGSETH: They (Congress) they were notified after the planes were safely out. What we complied with the notification requirements of the War Powers Act.

Q; They were notified.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: They were immediately thereafter. Yes.

Q: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, two questions, do you believe you completely destroyed Iranian nuclear program (sic)? And how about Iranian ballistic missiles? Your ally Israel always saying that is biggest threat (sic). And second question is very important, what will be your next step if Iran or militias under Iranian influence in the region attack us interests or allies in the region?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: And you can chime in on this too, Mr. Chairman, the battle damage assessment is ongoing. But our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here. We believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there. Ultimately, wherever it may be, whether it's in Iraq or Syria or bases in the Gulf, as the president said it would be, or excuse me, as the Chairman said it would be a very bad idea for Iran or its proxies to attempt to Attack American forces.

Q: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Secretary regarding retaliation, Iran and North Korea are cooperating on nuclear and missile development. Do you think there is a possibility that Iran, North Korea and other forces such as China will join forces to retaliate against the United States.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, unfortunately, because of the policies under the previous administration, we drove those countries together, and ultimately that creates a challenging environment. For this particular operation, the focus is on Iran and Iranian nuclear capabilities. That's our focus here is to not just say that they can't have, but President Trump has said, from over 20 years frankly, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and ultimately he decided this is the moment, given their stonewalling, when direct military action had to be taken to prevent that from happening.

Yes.

Q: Thank you very much. General Cain, I understand OpSec, I respect OpSec. Can you say at all what security procedures are being taken to protect U.S. troops in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. And Secretary Hegseth, as a global war on terrorism veteran, what do you say to veterans who may be concerned the U.S. is getting into another open-ended war in the Middle East over weapons of mass destruction?

GENERAL CAINE: Thanks, sir for the question. I won't comment on what force protection measures are being taken in the region. What I will say is we're being proactive and not reactive and being very thoughtful about ensuring that we do all that we can to protect our forces out there.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: And I would just say, as the president has directed and made clear, this is most certainly not open ended. It doesn't mean it limits our ability to respond. We will respond if necessary. The most powerful military in the world is postured and prepared to defend our people. But what the president gave us, as I said, was a focused, powerful and clear mission on the destruction of Iranian nuclear capabilities. Those were the targets. That's what was struck. That was overwhelming. That's what was overwhelming. That's what the Iranian regime needs to understand. As the president put it out, put out last night, he wants peace. There needs to be a negotiated settlement here. We ultimately demonstrated that Iran cannot have a nuclear capability. That is a very clear mission set on this operation.

Yes. Hold on, yes, right there.

Q: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Question for the secretary and the chairman. How is this strike coordinated with the Israelis on a strategic level, militarily and on a tactical level? Was there any direct Israeli military participation in this operation?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: Well, I would say certainly Israel had an incredible military success, especially at the beginning and ongoing, in degrading Iranian capabilities, degrading Iranian launchers, MRBMs (medium-range ballistic missiles), it's been incredible to watch what our ally Israel has been able to do. And there certainly have been conversations. I mean, General Kurilla at CENTCOM has worked closely in the defense of Israel for many years, and part of this operation was the defense of Israel and the ongoing defense of Israel. But as it pertains to this strike, this was U.S. operated, and U.S. led.

GENERAL CAINE: We took advantage of some of the preparatory work that's been done over the past week and a half in terms of axis of approach. I won't get into the particulars, but as the secretary said, it was a U.S. strike. We made sure we were not in the same piece of airspace and sky. Aside from that, that was the extent of it.

SECRETARY HEGSETH: We'll take a couple more. Yeah, right there.

Q: Question Mr. Secretary. First, are you concerned whatsoever now about the reaction from U.S. allies given the strike, particularly those in the Gulf and to the chairman, if I may, I understand you don't want to speak to specific assets, force protection measures, but do you anticipate at least having to bring in any further assets from other feeders to aid and force protection over the coming days?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: We certainly understand the challenges of allies in the region, and we have been respectful and in working in collaboration with them as it pertains to basing and sensitivities there. Ultimately, they've got a lot of assets and people in those locations also where American troops are co-located. So that's a consideration of ours. We've been in close consultation with them, and we appreciate the support that we have gotten.

GENERAL CAINE: Thanks for the question on sort of the global picture, and as you know, that's one of my jobs, is to look globally at the entire range of challenges. We are always carefully considering our force posture around the world and then offering options to the secretary and to the president. I won't comment on any future things, but the American people should know that we carefully consider those moves around the world and try to modulate, as needed, our force structure in the region.

Thank you. What communications are being sent to the Iranians right now? And is there any possibility of diplomacy now or in the coming days?

SECRETARY HEGSETH: I can, I can only confirm that there are both public and private messages being directly delivered to the Iranians in multiple channels giving them every opportunity to come to the table. They understand precisely what the American position is, precisely what steps they can take to allow for peace, and we hope they do so.

Q: The President may not want an open-ended conflict. The Iranians may disagree. Are you prepared for a protracted war?

SECRETARY HEGSETH Well, anything can happen in conflict, we acknowledge that, but the scope of this was intentionally limited. That's the message that we're sending with the capabilities of the American military nearly unlimited. So Iran, in that sense, has a choice, but we've made it very clear to them, this is nuclear sites. This is nuclear capabilities. This is the line that the president set, and we set that back. Now is the time to come forward for peace, but we…I think one of the takeaways from this as well is the unprecedented level of ongoing cooperation. I can't speak highly enough of the chairman and his staff and General Kurilla in CENTCOM, what they've done to look around the corner to pre-position, to understand how an operation like this comes together. The scope and scale of what occurred last night would take the breath away of almost any American if you had an opportunity to watch it in real time.

And I think Tehran is certainly calculating the reality that planes flew from the middle of America and Missouri overnight, completely undetected over three of their most highly sensitive sites, and we were able to destroy nuclear capabilities. And our boys in those bombers are on their way home right now. We believe that will have a clear psychological impact on how they view the future, and we certainly hope they take the path of negotiated peace.

But I could not be more proud of how this building operated, of the precision, the sensitivity and the professionalism of the troops involved in this effort.

I will take one more we'll take one more question. Yes, right there.

Q: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, concerning the justification for these strikes, in March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released their threat assessment concluded, quote, Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear programs he suspended in 2003 unquote. So what new intelligence does the US have since then that the Iranians have changed their position on nuclear weapons, and does this new intelligence come from U.S. sources and methods, or are we getting this information from other countries?

SECRETARY HEGSETH : Well, I would just simply say that the President's made it very clear he's looked at all of this, all of the intelligence, all the information, and come to the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat, and was willing to take this precision operation to neutralize that threat in order to advance American national interests, reduce the Iranian nuclear program and obviously collective self-defense of ourself and our allies. So he looked at all of it, understood the nature of the threat, and took bold action I think the American people would expect in a commander in chief.

That's all we've got. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

4. Trump Keeps His Promise on Iran. The World Is Safer for It.

Excerpt:

To us, preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon seems simply a matter of common sense. Yet so many Democrats apparently find it impossible to praise this president.

Trump Keeps His Promise on Iran. The World Is Safer for It.

The president warned that he wouldn’t tolerate a nuclear Iran. He meant what he said.

thefp.com · by The Editors

President Trump promised he would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Last night, with seven B-2 bombers and a dozen 30,000-pound bombs, he made good on that vow. The world is better off for it.

Trump announced Saturday evening that the U.S. had completed a “spectacularly successful” strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz, Esfahan, and Fordow. The last of those is a heavily fortified facility buried some 300 feet deep in a mountain in Iran’s Qom Province. Although Israel has bunker busting bombs, none have the size and destructive power of the most advanced American bombs, with the capability of destroying or severely damaging the site.

In a moment of political decisiveness and courage, Trump deployed those bombs, despite strenuous objections from the “restrainers” in his administration and parts of the MAGA coalition.

“There’s no military that could’ve done what we did,” Trump said during a brief speech to the nation Saturday night. He is correct. As Niall Ferguson and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant recently noted in these pages, Fordow was essentially impervious to assault. There was one bomb that could cut through its defenses: America’s GBU 57A/B Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP). And there was only one plane built to deliver that bomb: the American B-2 Spirit.

“With a single exertion of its unmatched military strength,” Ferguson and Gallant wrote, “the United States can shorten the war, prevent wider escalation, and end the principal threat to Middle Eastern stability. It can also send a signal to those other authoritarian powers who have been Iran’s enablers that American deterrence is back.”

That is exactly what this White House has done.

Watch Bari, Haviv Rettig Gur, Mike Doran, other experts react to the U.S. entry into the war:

It is impossible to know at this early stage whether the bombing strike completely destroyed their targets. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the three sites that were targeted sustained “severe damage and destruction.” But an anonymous “senior U.S. official” told The New York Times that the most important of the three sites, Fordow, was not completely destroyed. In the hours since the American bombing campaign, Israel has continued to strike at Iranian missile and drone sites, while Iran has hit Israeli cities with missile attacks.

Americans are skeptical of the U.S. involving itself in wars anywhere, let alone the Middle East. And for good reason: the memory of decades of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 7,000 Americans and untold Mideasterners who died during those wars. But none of that should obscure the reality that Iran has been a menace to the region and to America for decades.

It has the blood of so many Americans on its hands: from our GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan to our Marines in Lebanon to the attempted assassination of Trump himself—all the while relentlessly pursuing nuclear arms. There is no question that the region and the free world are safer without a nuclear Iran—and the inevitable arms race it would trigger, as other volatile countries in the region raced to get their own nuclear arms.

To us, preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon seems simply a matter of common sense. Yet so many Democrats apparently find it impossible to praise this president.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the best-known progressive in the House of Representatives, said that the strike against Iran was grounds for impeaching the president. “The president’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries complained that Trump had “failed to seek congressional authorization for the use of military force and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed Jeffries. “We must enforce the War Powers Act,” he said. Congressional authorization for a bombing run in the Mideast? Seriously?

On X, Jamie Metzl, who had been a member of Bill Clinton’s national security committee—and, by his own admission, “a vocal critic” of most of Trump’s policies—praised the president on Sunday “for bold and courageous actions in support of America’s core national interests, as he took last night.” But he was the exception among his tribe.

To those criticizing the bombing of Iran’s nuclear program, we must ask: Is it really not possible to oppose Trump while also acknowledging that preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is an unambiguously good thing?

It is understandable that Democrats don’t want the U.S. to become embroiled in another “forever war” in the Mideast. Most Republicans, whether MAGA or not, don’t want that either. But this is not another Iraq or Afghanistan.

There are no plans for American—or for that matter, even Israeli—boots on the ground in Iran. The closest thing to ground forces in this air and intelligence war are the networks of agents deployed masterfully so far by Israel’s Mossad.

President Trump has always been clear that he has no interest in prolonged American intervention overseas. He has also said, time and again, that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Consider how Russia’s nuclear arsenal prevented the Biden administration from acting more decisively in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—precisely for fear of a nuclear response. Imagine, now, Iran with the same implicit threat to fire a nuclear weapon against its enemies. Iran has been the nexus for terror for decades; a nuclear weapon would make them a true danger not just to Israel but to the entire world.

It is our hope that Saturday’s attack will have the effect of both freeing the U.S. from a prolonged foreign entanglement while quickly and decisively preventing the regime in Tehran from building this most horrifying of weapons.

None of this is to say that there won’t be negative repercussions from Saturday’s attack. Iran has repeatedly shown a willingness to strike abroad since their 1979 revolution installed the ayatollahs—consequently, American, Israeli, and Jewish “soft targets” are in a state of heightened vigilance.

In the meantime, Saudi Arabia has put its troops on maximum alert. Bahrain and Qatar have declared a state of emergency. Perhaps the most urgent concern is the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows. There are reports that Iran has already begun jamming navigation systems there and on Sunday afternoon, the Iranian parliament voted in support of closing the Strait entirely.

Isolationists are already claiming that this risk means the strike was a mistake. We strongly disagree.

Iran was already enriching enough uranium to fuel close to a dozen warheads. The civilized world could not allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear blackmailer.

And it was obvious that there was no diplomatic solution to the problem. That has been clear ever since the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration that was supposed to prevent Iran from furthering its nuclear aims. It failed to do so. It was made clear again when Trump returned to office, as he repeatedly called on Iran to negotiate a deal. Those calls fell on deaf ears. In April, the Trump administration gave Iran 60 days to come to a nuclear agreement. Again, there was no response. Even after Israel’s devastating first week of strikes, the mullahs said no.

Trump noted Saturday night that additional American attacks could begin if Tehran refuses to shut down its nuclear program completely. It is our sincere hope that Iran’s regime understands the existential threat it faces and disarms. If not, they are the only ones to blame for any future violence.

The theocracy in Iran has brutally subjugated its own people for nearly half a century now. They have exported violence across the Middle East and looked to murder innocent people across the world. It is a terrorist regime that must not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. We can only hope that we have finally stopped them at the last hour.

One final point: During Trump’s first term, his critics often noted how “lucky” it was for the U.S. that he didn’t face a serious foreign policy crisis. Their assumption is that he would be in over his head, and act irrationally. More recently, Wall Street coined the acronym TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out.

That’s the opposite of what happened on Saturday night. No matter what you think of Trump’s policies on immigration, tariffs, or anything else, there is only one adjective to describe his action in this crisis: presidential.

Our journalism is only possible because of you. If you believe in the kind of work we do at The Free Press become a paid subscriber today.

thefp.com · by The Editors

5. Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.

Opinion

Max Boot

Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.

As Iran is learning, the consequences of military action are hard to predict.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/22/united-states-trump-bombing-iran/

June 22, 2025 at 9:42 a.m. EDTYesterday at 9:42 a.m. EDT

6 min

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Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference Sunday after the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran. (Alex Brandon/AP)

The U.S. attack on Iran is another ripple effect from Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The more time that goes by, the more significant 10/7 looms. It is one of those hinge points in history — like 11/9 (the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989) or the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States — after which nothing will ever be the same again.

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In launching its barbaric assault on Israel, the Iranian-backed Hamas wanted to draw its regional partners into a broader war that, it hoped, would lead to the destruction of the Jewish state. But instead of destroying Israel, Hamas set in motion a train of events that resulted in the destruction of Iranian power across the region. In the more than 600 days since, much of Gaza has been razed and more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed (according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry). Hamas, though it still exists, is a shadow of its former self. Yahya Sinwar, the architect of 10/7, is dead, along with his brother, and most of Hamas’s commanders.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, while it did not join in the initial assault on Israel, followed up by rocketing northern Israel for many months. Last fall, Israel struck back with an offensive against Hezbollah that began with the “exploding pagers” operation. Now, its longtime leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is also dead, along with most of its senior commanders. Its military infrastructure has been decimated and its ability to exert power in Lebanon considerably diminished. Hezbollah missiles no longer pose a significant threat to Israel. With Hezbollah essentially defeated, another Iranian client, Bashar al-Assad, was toppled by rebels in Syria late last year. Now, Syria is ruled by a Sunni government with no love lost for the Shiite mullahs of Iran.

Though Iran still has powerful proxies in Yemen and Iraq, its strategy of encircling Israel with a “ring of fire” has been largely dismantled. That has allowed Israel to directly strike at Iran in a way it had always hesitated to do before.

Follow Trump’s second term

On June 12, Israeli airstrikes decapitated Iran’s senior military leaders and destroyed its air defenses. Israel’s objective was to stop, or at least to significantly set back, Iran’s nuclear program. That objective now draws closer to realization following President Donald Trump’s momentous decision to employ U.S. B-2 Stealth bombers armed with 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles to target Iran’s three major nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

The degree of damage inflicted by U.S. airstrikes is as yet uncertain; as Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday morning, bomb damage assessment takes time.

But one thing is already clear: Iran made a terrible miscalculation by dragging its feet on negotiations with, first, President Joe Biden and then Trump on a nuclear accord to replace the one Trump (unwisely) exited in 2018. Iranian negotiators, overestimating their country’s power and leverage, took a tough line by resisting U.S. demands to give up all of their enrichment capacity. Even while talking with the United States, moreover, the Iranians kept enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels, raising alarms in Jerusalem. They thought they could get away with it. They were wrong. Now, their major nuclear complexes — developed at vast cost over many decades — have been hit and hit hard.

Yet, tempting as it is for many Israelis and Americans to engage in triumphal chest-thumping, it is a temptation best resisted. Because the lesson of 10/7 — that war is unpredictable and that conflicts which begin with victories sometimes end in defeats — applies not only to the Iranian regime and its proxies. The same lesson holds for any country launching a war, as Israel learned during its long war in Lebanon (1982-2000) and the United States in its long post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump might think that, with one big airstrike, he is ending the war with Iran, but he might be just beginning it. In his Saturday night statement announcing the attacks, he said, “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.” Let’s hope that is what happens, but the Iranians were not sounding conciliatory on Sunday. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vowed to respond and said that the Trump administration understands only “the language of threat and force.” The Iranian regime rules by fear, and it will feel compelled to strike back in some fashion to avoid conveying an impression of weakness to its own populace.

Even in its wounded state, Iran has plenty of options for retaliation, ranging from terrorist strikes in the West to missile attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East to mining the Strait of Hormuz. The most worrisome possibility is that Iran still rushes to build a nuclear device.

The U.S. and Israel have undoubtedly set back Iran’s nuclear program, probably by several years, but, while bombs can eliminate facilities and kill scientists, they cannot erase the nuclear know-how that the Iranian regime has accumulated over many years. Nor is it even clear that the airstrikes have eliminated the roughly 900 pounds of uranium that, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran had already enriched to near-weapons-grade quality.

Iran might now feel compelled to, if it can, try to build a nuclear device — something that the U.S. intelligence community insisted it had not decided to do just a few days ago — to deter further attacks. Or, having seen how thoroughly Israeli intelligence has penetrated their power structure, the Iranians might not be eager to provoke another attack. We simply do not know how they will react — and, as the U.S. military says, the enemy always gets a vote.

In initiating the latest offensive against Iran, Israeli leaders appear to be gambling that they can set in motion the overthrow of the Iranian regime. That, at least, is something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for. But there is no precedent for regime change from the air; more often, air attacks — whether from German bombers targeting London in 1940 or Russian drones and missiles targeting Kyiv today — cause a civilian population to rally around their leaders. Even many Iranians who hate their theocratic regime say that the attacks on Iran will not loosen its hold on the country. So the likelihood is that the United States and Israel will still have to deal with the Islamic regime for years to come. A wounded, cornered predator can still be dangerous.

At this early date, the consequences of the U.S. attack on Iran — Operation Midnight Hammer — remain uncertain. All we can say for sure is that wars have unpredictable consequences and that reverberations from 10/7 will continue to reshape the Middle East for years to come.

6. A Cornered Iran Gives Few Clues on Response to Bombings

A Cornered Iran Gives Few Clues on Response to Bombings

Trump doesn't rule out backing a change in Iran's leadership, as officials assess strikes on nuclear sites

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-us-latest-news

Last Updated:

June 23, 2025 at 2:58 AM ET

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After the U.S. struck Iran’s most fortified nuclear sites, the regime’s clerical leaders are facing a perilous choice: hit back at the U.S. and risk a widening a war with two militarily superior foes, or return to nuclear talks where they would likely have to make concessions on nuclear enrichment and their ballistic-missile arsenal, two pillars of the country’s sovereignty.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in what appeared to be his first comments since the U.S. attack, didn’t mention the U.S. and instead focused on Israel in a post on X. Israel made a “grave mistake” and “it is being punished right now,” the post said.

Israel announced more strikes against Iran’s military infrastructure, while Iran launched another missile barrage toward Israel. Leaders in Europe urged Iran not to respond in a way that would “destabilize the region,” while President Trump gave no ground on his demand for Iran to agree on the U.S.’s terms for a peace deal. Trump didn’t rule out backing a change in Iran’s leadership on Sunday.

Iran’s missile arsenal and military infrastructure have been degraded by Israel’s recent military strikes. But the exact extent remains unclear, and Iran possesses other means to strike back such as cyberattacks and possibly terrorist proxies, or disrupting oil shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Uncertainty over how Iran might respond had stock and oil markets on edge, with U.S. futures moving slightly lower. Oil prices are higher in initial trading, but the rise is relatively modest.

One factor that might play a role in Iran’s response is the extent of the damage caused by the U.S.’s bunker-busting munitions. Iranian officials said they had minimized the impact of the strikes. Satellite images collected by Maxar Technologies showed several large holes punched in a ridge over the underground Fordow uranium-enrichment complex and entrances blocked with dirt and debris. What happened to the centrifuges and other equipment will likely only be known if international inspectors can access the sites.

What else to know:

Iran’s foreign minister arrived in Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for consultations on how to proceed.

Vice President JD Vance signaled Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is still intact and in Iranian control.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was making progress toward destroying Iran’s nuclear threat and ballistic-missile threat. “We are moving step after step to achieve these goals. We are very, very close to completing them,” he said.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Oman joined the head of the United Nations in condemning the U.S. strikes.

Latest Updates

24 min ago

Stock Markets in Asia Take Tensions in Stride

Peter Landers

A stock quotation board in Tokyo. (kim kyung-hoon/Reuters)

An extended Middle East war and disruption in oil supplies would hit the oil-importing nations of East Asia, but stock investors don’t appear too worried. Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average closed down 0.1% on Monday on normal volume and other major markets in the region weren’t considerably changed from Friday’s close.

Hang Seng Index

HK:HSI (Hong Kong Exchange)

23671.51141.030.60%

KOSPI Composite Index

KR:180721 (Korea Exchange)

Updated 59 min ago

Iranian Foreign Minister in Moscow to Meet Putin

Jared Malsin

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Iran’s top diplomat has arrived in Moscow for a meeting Monday with President Vladimir Putin, according to Iranian state media outlet IRNA. “Russia is a friend of Iran,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at a press briefing in Istanbul before flying to Russia. “We always consult with each other and coordinate our positions.”

Araghchi said Iran had kept Moscow briefed on recent negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program. He said he planned to have serious consultations with Putin on how to proceed.

Updated 1 hour ago

Israeli Strikes in Iran Continue Following U.S. Attack

Feliz Solomon

Israel announced more strikes against Iran’s military infrastructure, continuing its effort to degrade Tehran’s capabilities. Iranian state news agency IRNA said the capital city’s air defenses were operating throughout the night.

The Israeli military said the air force was carrying out strikes against military infrastructure in western Iran. It had earlier said that some 20 jet fighters struck targets Sunday, including storage and missile launch infrastructure, as well as satellite and radar sites. Israel also said it struck a surface-to-air missile launcher in the Tehran area.

7. U.S. Investigates How Much of Iran’s Nuclear Program Was Destroyed—And How Much Remains

U.S. Investigates How Much of Iran’s Nuclear Program Was Destroyed—And How Much Remains

Pentagon says it is still assessing the results of the attack as Tehran vows to continue its nuclear efforts.

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Satellite image shows damage to Iran’s Fordow underground nuclear complex after the U.S. airstrikes. Photo: Maxar Technologies

By Michael R. Gordon

, Lara Seligman

and Laurence Norman

Updated June 22, 2025 8:02 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

American forces struck Iran’s Fordow uranium-enrichment complex with stealth bombers and bunker-busting munitions.
Satellite images show damage to the facility, but the extent of damage to centrifuges is unknown due to access restrictions.
Experts are unsure of the strike’s success, while Iran downplays the damage.

WASHINGTON—Trump administration officials said Sunday that the air and missile strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure were a devastating blow that has likely set back Iran’s nuclear program for years.

But Israel and the U.S. could nonetheless find the decadeslong battle they have waged against Tehran’s nuclear activities could continue indefinitely if the Iranians managed to relocate some of their stocks of highly enriched uranium and other equipment before the U.S. military attacked.

Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Sunday that the operation was “designed to severely degrade” Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. But he said additional assessments of the damage were needed before the Pentagon could rule out the possibility that some of Iran’s nuclear capability remained.

The surprise U.S. attack was launched a minute after midnight Saturday morning when seven B-2 stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri carrying 14 30,000 pound bunker bombs.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses details of the strikes during a news conference at the Pentagon Sunday. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The bombers flew for 18 hours, refueling multiple times in flight, and linking up with an array of advanced U.S. fighters.

Just before 5 p.m. Eastern time, as the bombers were about to cross undetected into Iranian territory, a U.S. submarine in the Middle East launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran’s Isfahan facility.

As the B-2s soared over Iran, the fighters pre-emptively launched missiles against Iranian air defenses. No shots appeared to have been fired at the American planes by the Iranians, Caine said.

In total, the bombers dropped 14 of the heavy bunker busting bombs, known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, against the Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m. Eastern time.

Vice President JD Vance said the air and missile strikes had been so decisive that they had shut down Tehran’s only known option to develop nuclear weapons.

“I think that it is going to be many, many years before the Iranians are able to develop a nuclear weapon,” Vance told NBC “Meet the Press.”

Satellite imagery of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility on June 15, before the U.S. strikes, and after the attack on June 22. Maxar Technologies

But some experts highlighted the uncertainties over the status of the Iranian program, raising the possibility that the U.S. and Israel might still need to keep close watch on Iran for years to come to be sure it is not trying to rebuild its nuclear program—and even use force again to prevent it.

“We can reasonably assume that centrifuges in Fordow and Natanz were destroyed,” Richard Nephew, a former negotiator with Iran during the Biden and Obama administrations, said in an interview. “But we still don’t know if that is all the centrifuges. And we don’t know what they may have taken out before the attack, especially Iran’s stock of enriched uranium.”

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency haven’t been able to visit Iran’s key nuclear sites since Israel began its air campaign against Iran early on June 13.

If Iran evicts the monitors, the agency would be unable to provide a detailed assessment of the status of what remains of Iran’s program, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said.

Iran has always insisted that its nuclear program is purely peaceful, intended for civilian purposes.

Israel-Iran Conflict

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Appeared in the June 23, 2025, print edition as 'Damage Extent From U.S. Strikes on Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Site Unclear U.S. Weighs Strikes’ Damage in Iran'.

8. What Happens If Iran’s Regime Collapses?

I am 100% certain (even though I have never served in CENTCOM or know any who serve there now) that CENTCOM has developed contingency plans for the catastrophic collapse of Iran and conducted detailed planning. Every bit of the speculation below (and much more) can be found in the J5 spaces of the CENTCOM HQ.

But have they been put through the interagency process? Who is driving the interagency process right now?

It would be nice if we had a PDD 56 like process for the management of complex contingency operations so that the interagency would already have developed the political-military supporting plans (to support an overall national plan not simply a military plan).

What Happens If Iran’s Regime Collapses?

Trump says it’s time to Make Iran Great Again. But what’s more likely if the mullahs fall: democracy or anarchy?

By Eli Lake

06.23.25 — International

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-happens-if-irans-regime-collapses

An Iranian paratrooper parachutes past the tomb of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, during a military parade on April 18, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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A lot has changed in the past 48 hours of this war.

Before American B-2 bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz, the message from the White House was that regime change was off the table. Indeed, the chatter out of Washington and Jerusalem was that the White House was spooked by some of Israel’s messaging.

Defense minister Israel Katz instructed the military to destabilize Iran’s regime and threatened that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be permitted to exist” after an Iranian missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in the southern part of the country. Indeed, the operation’s name, “Rising Lion,” is a not-so-subtle nod to the Iranian flag under the Peacock dynasty, which ruled Iran until the Shah was ousted in the Islamic revolution in 1979. The son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, is now calling for a national rebellion. “The Islamic Republic has come to its end and is collapsing. What has begun is irreversible,” he said in a video message from the United States, where he has lived since 1979.

Now, 10 days into the war Israel began against Iran’s nuclear program—the prospect of a regime collapse is very real. President Donald Trump on Sunday evening floated the idea in a post on Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

This kind of talk has gone out of favor in Washington in recent years. The fall of dictatorships in Libya and Iraq led to confessional sectarian war. The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt led briefly to a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo before a military coup. But in Iran, a country that has experienced democratic uprisings five times since 2017, it now seems like a real possibility.

Since the war began I spoke to 10 opposition figures, analysts, and U.S. officials who have varying levels of optimism and pessimism about what could come next if this regime is stripped of what really gives it its true power: its nuclear weapons program and the leadership of its ruthless security services. There is no doubt that the war has humiliated Khamenei. Iran no longer controls its own airspace, has been all but abandoned by its allies, and has lost nearly all of its top military leaders. Nonetheless, the answer to the question of whether the regime will actually fall and what would come next is far from clear.

At the heart of the present uncertainty is a paradox. On the one hand, the Iranian regime is wobbling. On the other, the organic Iranian opposition has been targeted with ruthless lethality by security services that have proven efficient in targeting dissidents. Since 2009 and the Green Movement against the stolen presidential election that year, internal opposition leaders have been killed, exiled, or jailed.

The last uprising began in 2022 and was sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini, who was detained for improperly wearing the Islamic headscarf known as the hijab. Her killing sparked nationwide grassroots protests, known as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Women were blinded with acid and beaten by the Basij militia. Other demonstrators were shot. In November 2022, poison gas attacks began to be reported in a number of girls’ schools where the students had supported the protest movement. As hundreds of girls returned from their schools sickened by these gas attacks, the protests began to dwindle. State violence again suppressed popular outrage.

Will Iran’s thugs suppress the Iranian people again? They are already trying. There is already a near total internet blackout, and reliable reports from the country suggest the regime is conducting mass arrests of suspected dissidents.

Mehdi Yahyanejad, a well-known Iranian American democracy activist who works on defeating the regime’s internet censorship, said Trump’s recent warnings to Khamenei have changed the dynamics on the ground in Iran. Iranians “realize this is much bigger than the nuclear issue and the end of the regime is in sight,” he said. “The top IRGC commanders are gone. In some places, their replacements are gone. People are frightened. People are trying to save their lives and get out of the way. But this is not an uprising. This is a collapse of the regime.”

Khalid Majidyar, a senior manager at the National Endowment for Democracy who works with opposition groups in Iran, told The Free Press that the regime was facing a legitimacy crisis before Israel’s campaign. But he added, “Our partners are worried even if the regime collapses what would replace it. They don’t want the theocracy to be replaced with an IRGC-led military dictatorship.”

There is no doubt that the regime is on the ropes. Since the war began, at least 17 senior military commanders were killed in pinpoint Israeli attacks. Iran had no defense against Israel’s air force, which obtained air supremacy over the skies of Tehran in less than 48 hours. And none of Iran’s putative allies, including Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones for its own war in Ukraine, has come to Iran’s aid. An Israeli strike on Iran’s state broadcasting building was captured live as a woman in Islamic headdress was ranting on air. On Wednesday, clips of Iranian state television broadcasting footage from past demonstrations made the rounds on social media, suggesting the state’s propaganda organ had been hacked. The most humiliating development for Khamenei’s regime is that its once mighty Lebanese proxy Hezbollah has offered only words of encouragement, but stayed on the sidelines.

Those developments are deadly for a dictatorship that survives on its reputation for omnipotence and ferocity. And at the same time, there is almost no chance that these blows to the regime will inspire an instant uprising. Iranians right now are terrified. There have been only sparse demonstrations since the war began.

Mohsen Sazegara is a former deputy prime minister of Iran and one of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. “I tried at first to reform the Islamic Republic in the 1980s. I was arrested four times for my political activities and I finally came over to America in 2005,” he told me. Sazegara said that Iranians in the current moment are not going to flood the streets and demand their freedom. “Some stupid opposition in this situation are telling people to come out to the streets and overthrow the regime,” he said. “Right now people are thinking about their security, and second, they are thinking about food, medicine, and fuel. The government has failed to support the people. I think if we are lucky and take over the power from Khamenei it would be very good, but I doubt we can at this moment.”

Mariam Memarsadeghi, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the founder and director of the Cyrus Forum for Iran’s Future, also sees very little hope in a democratic transition as Israel wages war in Iran. “The opposition, unfortunately, is not ready,” she said. “I don’t like saying that but it’s the truth. Pahlavi talks about having a plan to maintain security and stability, but I just don’t see how that can be possible. At the very least, he is going to need foreign help.”

That foreign help will not be coming from America. Despite the president’s MIGA post, there is no serious conversation inside the Trump administration about another nation-building war in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday told reporters that America’s war aims did not include “regime change.” As one Trump administration official told me, “There is no chance we go in for nation-building when this thing is done.”

For different reasons, Israel will also not be stabilizing a post-Khamenei Iran. Israel would welcome a democratic Iran but will settle for a weakened one. The Jewish state is far too small—with a population of just over 10 million—to put significant boots on the ground in a country of more than 90 million people if Khamenei was deposed. Nonetheless, its intelligence service, Mossad, has cultivated networks now being used for targeting nuclear and military sites and other kinds of sabotage. Two former U.S. national security officials who worked closely with Israel while in government said those networks can be repurposed to support an Iranian uprising should the need arise.

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Free Press, “What is going to get Iranians back to the streets in great numbers will be support from the West; that means Israel. The security apparatus is weakened. There is an internet blackout. It’s early days. I think the opportunity is there.”

Dave Wurmser, a former national security council staffer in Trump’s first term who also worked at the Pentagon and State Department under George W. Bush, said Israeli war planners were aware that a byproduct of the campaign could “destabilize the regime to the point where it could fall.”

Some former U.S. intelligence analysts, however, see the prospects of a democratic uprising in the near term to be slim. Jonathan Panikoff, the former deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, told me that even if Iran’s supreme leader was taken out, the regime may not collapse. “I would love nothing more than democracy in Iran, but it’s much more likely that you get IRGC-istan,” he said, a reference to the Revolutionary Guard Corps that has amassed extraordinary domestic power over the last 25 years. “At the end of the day, guns trump words. We’ve seen that play out in 2009, in 2017 in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. It’s more likely it’s a different kind of authoritarian state, a military junta with a fig leaf government, a Pakistan on steroids.”

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian targets officer for the CIA, also said he was not expecting a democratic transition in Iran in the near term. “I would expect some form of anarchy; that is always the case in Iran when the central government goes down,” he said. One of the problems for the internal opposition is that “the regime has done an excellent job of locating individuals who have charisma and neutralizing them. The opposition is there, but it’s not cohesive,” Gerecht added. That said, he stressed that there were too many factors that were unknown to really predict what would come next if Khamenei was toppled.

The most salient factor that will determine if a democratic transition in Iran is possible is how many mid-level officers in the internal security agencies of the state, like the Basij militia and the intelligence ministry, are willing to break ranks with their superiors and refuse to fire on protesters.

Gerecht said that the apparatus that arrested and killed demonstrators in the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations in 2022 and 2023 will likely carry out such orders. Sazegara, the former deputy prime minister, is optimistic that at least some of them can be turned. “Our strategy is, as much as possible, to support dissidents inside the IRGC and the army and the intelligence services to join the people,” he said. But any chance for such an uprising will have to wait until the war is over.

9. Did Iran Just Sneak Out Critical Nuclear Material from Fordow?

Uh oh....

And a question we should consider is how much help could Iran receive from north Korea?

Excerpts:

But the bottom line is that Iran’s program is massively degraded, but not destroyed. And secretive sites and equipment almost certainly remain.

These damage assessments of the strikes are ongoing, and the officials in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Washington acknowledged that Iran may have made good on their recent pledges to divert nuclear equipment and fissile materials away from these known installations. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote to United Nations leaders on May 22 saying Tehran was preparing to do just that. Tehran had been successful over the past three decades in shielding some of its nuclear infrastructure and research work from Western spies and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

...

Current and former U.S. and IAEA officials told The Free Press that Iran’s nuclear program very much remains a threat—even after Saturday night’s bombing campaign. They don’t discount the possibility that Tehran’s theocratic rulers are still seeking to “break out” and build an atomic weapon.

...

But former IAEA officials told me there’s a strong possibility that Tehran already has constructed other small—and secret—sites to enrich uranium stockpiles to replace the centrifuge machines at Natanz and Fordow, which appear to have been destroyed.

“I would be surprised, given Iran’s past activities, if they hadn’t planned to construct other enrichment sites,” Olli Heinonen, who headed the IAEA’s efforts to investigate Iran’s nuclear program from 2002–2010, told The Free Press. “They can be assembled in extremely small buildings.”

Did Iran Just Sneak Out Critical Nuclear Material from Fordow?

Before the U.S. struck, 16 cargo trucks entered the fortified mountain complex and moved unidentified equipment to another location.

By Jay Solomon

06.23.25 — International

https://www.thefp.com/p/did-iran-just-sneak-out-critical

Maxar satellite imagery reveals 16 cargo trucks lined along the main road approaching the underground tunnel entrance of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant on June 19, 2025. (Maxar for Getty Images)

Last Thursday, as Israel expanded its military campaign, Iranian authorities at the Fordow nuclear complex in the country’s northwest dispatched 16 cargo trucks to the underground site’s primary tunnel entrance. These vehicles proceeded, over the next 24 hours, to move unidentified equipment a kilometer away, while working to fortify the mountain-covered crown jewel in the Islamic Republic’s atomic program.

American and Israeli intelligence, as well as private satellite operators, detected these activities around the complex, U.S. officials working on Iran told The Free Press. But Washington and Jerusalem decided not to act, in part to try and track where the vehicles ultimately went, but also to wait for President Donald Trump to formally green-light an attack on Fordow, which he did a day later. Now, nuclear experts worry, Tehran may have used this window to slip sensitive equipment and materials to other secret locations across the country.

“I wish the Israelis had moved quicker to disable Fordow,” David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector, told me in the aftermath of the American bombing campaign of the facility. “It’s still a mystery exactly what was in those trucks. But any highly enriched uranium at Fordow was likely gone before the attack.”

Trump administration officials on Sunday said the 14 GBU-12 “bunker buster” bombs—known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs—dropped on Iran over the weekend inflicted massive damage on the three atomic sites. Trump, announcing the attack in a national address on Saturday night, said the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites had been “completely and totally obliterated” by the B-2 bomber strikes. Pentagon defense chief Pete Hegseth, briefing reporters Sunday morning on Operation Midnight Hammer, said it was “an incredible and overwhelming success.”

The reality is much more complicated.

U.S. officials and independent analysts believe that the Pentagon’s Saturday bombing of Fordow and the two other Iranian nuclear sites—following more than a week of separate Israeli attacks—extended the time Iran needs to produce weapons-grade uranium by months, if not years. Israeli security forces, over the past 10 days, have also degraded the intellectual brainpower behind Iran’s nuclear program: assassinating dozens of scientists and members of Tehran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

But the bottom line is that Iran’s program is massively degraded, but not destroyed. And secretive sites and equipment almost certainly remain.

These damage assessments of the strikes are ongoing, and the officials in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Washington acknowledged that Iran may have made good on their recent pledges to divert nuclear equipment and fissile materials away from these known installations. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote to United Nations leaders on May 22 saying Tehran was preparing to do just that. Tehran had been successful over the past three decades in shielding some of its nuclear infrastructure and research work from Western spies and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

An Iranian protester shouts anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans next to portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in downtown Tehran, Iran, on June 22, 2025. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel, and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” Vice President J.D. Vance told ABC’s This Week on Sunday, referring to the whereabouts of Tehran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.

Current and former U.S. and IAEA officials told The Free Press that Iran’s nuclear program very much remains a threat—even after Saturday night’s bombing campaign. They don’t discount the possibility that Tehran’s theocratic rulers are still seeking to “break out” and build an atomic weapon.

Iranian officials, after the U.S. attack, vowed to continue pursuing the country’s nuclear program. “This is not the first time our facilities are attacked,” a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said. “Considering our capabilities, the nuclear industry must continue.”

Since Iran began developing the technologies to build nuclear weapons in the late 1990s—through a program called the AMAD Plan—its military and scientific leaders have been in a constant battle to keep their advances secret from prying American and Israeli eyes. This included razing research sites and attempting to wash away traces of fissile materials located there. This is why few in Washington and Israel were surprised last month when Iranian leaders, in response to Israeli military operations and threats, announced they were preparing to put online a third uranium enrichment site at an undisclosed location.

But former IAEA officials told me there’s a strong possibility that Tehran already has constructed other small—and secret—sites to enrich uranium stockpiles to replace the centrifuge machines at Natanz and Fordow, which appear to have been destroyed.

“I would be surprised, given Iran’s past activities, if they hadn’t planned to construct other enrichment sites,” Olli Heinonen, who headed the IAEA’s efforts to investigate Iran’s nuclear program from 2002–2010, told The Free Press. “They can be assembled in extremely small buildings.”

The Finnish nuclear scientist said such an installation could be a pilot plant with 1,000 advanced centrifuges, which could look like a workshop or a warehouse in any Iranian industrial area. Iran only needs to do minimal work to convert its stockpiles of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity to 90 percent, which is weapons grade.

Heinonen said other elements of Iran’s nuclear program also could be in place and hidden elsewhere. The U.S. and Israel struck the uranium conversion site at Isfahan in part to eliminate the production lines converting uranium gas into metal. This material can be fabricated to create the core of a nuclear warhead.

“I wouldn’t underestimate them,” Heinonen, who’s spent decades studying Iran’s overt and covert nuclear activities, said of Tehran’s scientists and nuclear officials.

U.S., Israeli, and IAEA officials are expected to continue tracking and hunting these nuclear bureaucrats and administrators for signs of secret sites and continued work. Israel announced last week—and Iran, in part, confirmed—that the IDF and Mossad had killed at least ten nuclear scientists during their first week of operations in and over Iran. These included individuals believed to have worked on both the AMAD Plan and the offices of SPND, a related nuclear research center. Chief among them were Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi and Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who Mossad previously sought to assassinate with a car bomb in 2010 in downtown Tehran.

The removal of these nuclear weapons experts denies Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei both deep knowledge and experience. But Heinonen, Albright, and others who have studied Iran’s nuclear weapons research say Tehran has spent decades training a new generation of scientists and bureaucrats to run facilities like Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. And they stressed that many of these individuals remain, with their knowledge intact.

Heinonen told me he’s continued to follow some of Iran’s nuclear scientists and academics through their research papers and scholarship. “I have seen some of their publications,” he said. “I know they’re working on the nuclear problem. I just don’t know where.”

10. Regime Change in Iran? History Says Unlikely

Conclusion:

United States leadership continues to claim that the US does not seek war, but Operation Midnight Hammer indeed entered Israel’s war on June 21 by attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Even though the strikes may have crippled the Iranian nuclear program, its ramifications in the Iranian psyche may be quite different. If history repeats itself, the attacks on the Iranian homeland will only unify the Iranian populace against both the US and Israel.

Opinion / Perspective| The Latest

Regime Change in Iran? History Says Unlikely

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/23/regime-change-in-iran-history-says-unlikely/

by Emily Stranger

06.23.2025 at 06:00am

Abstract: Although Israeli and US objectives claim attacks on Iran are meant to destroy its nuclear capabilities, Israel has suggested that regime change may happen. This article argues that regime change in Iran is unlikely due to historical precedence.

After launching Operation Rising Lion on June 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled that Israel’s objectives extend beyond merely dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, Israel appears to hope that the strikes will encourage the Iranian people to revolt against the theocratic regime that has ruled the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Following the initial attack, Netanyahu reportedly addressed the Iranian public, stating, “This is your opportunity to stand up [to the regime].”

On June 21, prior to US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel’s Persian X account, the official page of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted a picture depicting the face of a lion overlapping both the Israeli and pre-Islamic Revolutionary flag of Iran. The accompanying text, in English, proclaimed: “Reminder: Israelis and Iranians have a rich history of friendship and cooperation. Our war is not with the Iranian people – it is with the regime that divided us. When this regime collapses, our friendship will grow stronger than ever.”

Lion as a Symbol of Persian Nationalism

The lion is a potent nationalist symbol in Persian culture. Israel’s use of the lion on both the name of the Israeli operation and a post on Israel’s Persian-language X account implicitly evoke aspirations of a nationalist resurgence. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian flag featured the emblem of a lion wielding a sword with a rising sun behind it—a symbol that gained prominence during the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. Over time, it became widely recognized as the emblem of the Persian Empire and was formally adopted on Iran’s national flag in 1910. This symbol remained until the revolution, when it was replaced with the current emblem of the Islamic Republic. Today, the lion and sun motif is embraced by opposition groups to the Islamic Republic, such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI).

The Iran-Iraq War: A Conflict Etched in Iranian Collective Memory

Some analysts also seem to think that the Iranian regime is in fear of collapse. They believe that Iran’s non-Persian minorities can revolt against the regime. Yigal Carmon, President of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), told Fox News Digital that non-Persian ethnic groups within the country “could topple the regime in a few months,” citing Iran’s Kurds, Baloch, and Ahwazi populations. Argued here is that the Israeli and US attacks unify many Iranians, but they will also embolden them. Historical precedent supports this assertion.

Saddam Hussein made the grave mistake of miscalculating the Iranian nation and its minorities at the dawn of the Iran-Iraq War. Driven by fear of an Iranian-inspired revolution seeping into his own country of Iraq, as well as to settle a list of historical grievances he had against the Shah, Hussein thought that attacking post-Revolutionary Iran was going to be easy. To be sure, the Shah had fled the country, a new dispensation was still in the works, the Iranian army still had Shah loyalists among its ranks, and both Kurdish and Turkmen separatists were fermenting dissent at opposite corners of the country. For Saddam, it seemed like the perfect time to strike.

His first operation into the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran appeared as an obvious win. Hussein was convinced that the predominant Arab population would happily join the Iraqi Arabs in toppling the fledgling Shiite-led theocracy taking shape in Tehran. The opposite happened. Instead, the Khuzestani Arabs joined forces with the Iranian army, eventually expelling the Iraqi troops. Today, Khuzestan is a top destination for war tourism in Iran, with 41 national-registered sites related to the Sacred Defense of Khuzestan.

The resistance against Iraq’s invasion of Iran became known as Sacred Defense and is etched within the hearts and minds of the Iranian people, both Persian and non-Persian. Sacred Defense Week in Iran has been held annually during the week of September 21 and it is marked by military parades held by the Iranian armed forces. It is during these parades that the latest ballistic missiles, such as those being currently fired at Israel, are proudly put on display. An article published by Mehr News Agency writes about the Sacred Defense era that:

“With the imposition of war on our country by Iraq, a unique unity was formed. Minority group representatives asserted their communities’ desire to defend their country. Zoroastrian, Assyrian, and Christian communities not only offered their support and contributions but also took action.”

A Tehran Times article writes that the “martyrs of religious minorities” symbolized “national unity” and praises the sacrifices of multiple ethnicities. “With the imposition of war on our country by Iraq, a unique unity was formed. Minority group representatives asserted their communities’ desire to defend their country. Zoroastrian, Assyrians, and Christian communities not only offered their support and contributions but also took action.”

It is worth noting that Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is of Azerbaijani descent. His father relocated the family to Tabriz in northwestern Iran during Khamenei’s childhood, before eventually settling in Mashhad. In Mashhad, one of Iran’s holiest cities, his father led prayers at the Siddiqis Mosque in the city’s market, also known as the Azerbaijanis’ Mosque. Tabriz and much of northwestern Iran are predominantly populated by Azerbaijanis, the largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians. Azerbaijanis are a Turkic-speaking people, and both Tabriz and Baku (the capital of neighboring Azerbaijan) are considered cultural centers of Azerbaijani identity. Khamenei’s Azerbaijani heritage has never been a source of controversy, highlighting the relative harmony between Iran’s Persian majority and its Azerbaijani population.

Overall, the Iran-Iraq War was a disastrous conflict that resulted in mass casualties for both Iraq and Iran. It is also remembered for the violent tactics employed by both sides. Saddam used chemical weapons to kill and maim Iranian Soldiers, and Iran deployed human assault waves, often stacked with children and the elderly, to walk across mine fields. Death toll estimates vary, with the high end estimating one million for Iran and 150,000 dead for Iraq.

Inside Iran, the narrative that the US supported the Iraqi regime in its conquest to kill Iranians is alive and well, and CIA declassified documents released in 2013 certified the allegations. According to the documents, the CIA admits that the Iraqi’s “relied on US satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence” to launch four major offensive against Iranians using mustard gas and sarin, and that “These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq’s favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration’s long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed.”

Although the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s may seem like a distant event to the modern American consciousness, its impact remains deeply ingrained in the collective memory of Iranians. Iranian who grew up in Tehran—and are now in their mid-30s and 40s—still vividly recall the blare of air raid sirens warning of incoming missiles from Saddam Hussein’s regime. One commenter recalling: “That was the war when the world turned its back on Iran.” (Comment from Iranian to author).

Iranians also remember the 1953 Iranian coup d’état wherein the US and the UK staged a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Both declassified CIA documents and former President Barack Obama confirmed US participation. For Iranians, this was a direct slap-in-the-face by the US for “shattering Iran’s democratic process.”

Iranians Protest Israeli Aggression

Israel’s attacks on Iran once again stirred up national sentiment, but not in the way Israel was hoping, at least from this analyst’s perspective. Despite the downing of Iran’s internet network, a vast network of Telegram pages are up and running. One channel, titled “The Scared Defense News Agency,” has been publishing multiple posts describing the damage caused by Israeli attacks and showcasing Iranian damage in Israel. A posting published the morning of June 21, prior to the US attacks, claimed to be a photograph of a mural in Vali Asr square of Tehran titled “I am an Iranian Soldier.” The picture depicts Iranian civilians of different occupations and ages giving a salute.

The number of Iranian civilian casualties is not helping the Israeli objective, either. A June 21 post by The Scared Defense News Agency Telegram page quotes Hossein Kermanpour, head of the Iranian Health Ministry’s public relations, as claiming that Israel was responsible for the deaths of “400 defenseless Iranians” and the injury of 3,056 people with missile and drone attacks. Furthermore, he claims that 54 of the “martyrs” were women and children.

In addition, protestors against Israel and the US have begun filling the streets throughout Iran. On June 20, an article in the New York Times reported protests in Tehran and other cities in support of the country’s military. Protestors on the ground in central Tehran addressed both the US and Israel when interviewed by CNN. One woman addressed Donald Trump directly, saying “Trump, you are threatening my leader, don’t you know my nation believes death is sweeter than honey?” When asked what he has to say to Israel, one protestor yelled, “You (Israel) have nothing. You are occupiers. Unreligious. You’re killing people. Killing women. You kill everyone. You’re terrorists.”

United States leadership continues to claim that the US does not seek war, but Operation Midnight Hammer indeed entered Israel’s war on June 21 by attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Even though the strikes may have crippled the Iranian nuclear program, its ramifications in the Iranian psyche may be quite different. If history repeats itself, the attacks on the Iranian homeland will only unify the Iranian populace against both the US and Israel.

(Disclaimer: The views presented in this article reflect those of the author and not any element of the United States Government, the US Department of Defense, or the Department of the Army).

About The Author

Emily Stranger
Dr. Emily Stranger is the Senior Regional, Expertise, and Culture (REC) instructor for the 1st SFC(A) REC program and holds a Ph.D. in Central Asian Studies from Indiana University (2025). You can find Emily on LinkedIn. All views expressed in this article are her own.

11. Words as Weapons: The Strategic Power of Chinese Slogans in Modern Propaganda

In 2011 when we visited China with 15 National War College Students we visited an Armored Brigade HQ northwest of Beijing. As they were showing us their military equipment (all spit shined and dress right dress) I could not help but notice the KD rifle range. At the end of the range were two signs on each side of the range which were painted red with bright yellow or gold lettering. Of course they had huge Chinese characters but what surprised me was that under them they had "For World Peace" on one sign and "For Domestic Stability" on the other side.

Were we the target audience (probably since they were in English)? If so what effect did they think such slogans would have on us? If they were not meant for us, assuming the CHinese character said the same as the English are these types of slogans motivating to PLA soldiers?

Conclusion:

Chinese slogans are not ornamental; they are strategic tools of political control, cultural signaling, and international persuasion. Their rhythmic simplicity, emotional framing, and repeated exposure foster internalization without overt resistance, normalizing authoritarian values as universal moral imperatives. To counter these narratives, democratic states must learn to decode slogans as rhetorical traps that structure thought and constrain dissent, transforming language into a weapon of ideological.

Words as Weapons: The Strategic Power of Chinese Slogans in Modern Propaganda

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/23/words-as-weapons-the-strategic-power-of-chinese-slogans-in-modern-propaganda/

by Douglas Wilbur

06.23.2025 at 06:00am

Words as Weapons: The Strategic Power of Chinese Slogans in Modern Propaganda

No political culture is more slogan-saturated than China’s. When Xi Jinping stood before the United Nations (U.N.) in 2015 and declared China’s commitment to building a “Community of Shared Future for Mankind,” many Western observers heard a vague soft diplomacy platitude rather than a strategic signal. The slogan, however, functioned as a rhetorical trap, reframing China’s authoritarian model as morally legitimate and future-oriented while portraying liberal democracies as selfish and out of touch with humanity’s collective destiny.

From rural banners to urban subway screens, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) floods public life with concise ideological formulas designed to structure thought and shape behavior. These slogans are poetically engineered, often using rhythmic structures like wǔyán (five-character lines) and qǐyán (seven-character lines), serving as tools of mass persuasion, social discipline, and international signaling. Yet Western analysts often dismiss them as ornamental rather than strategic. Thus, the goal of this essay is to reveal the nature of slogans, identify the psychological mechanisms they operate through, and explain how the CCP understands and employs slogans as propaganda and communications.

What are Slogans and How do they Work?

A good comprehensive definition of a slogan is: “A slogan is a short, memorable phrase used in marketing, or political communication that encapsulates the essence of a brand, message, or ideological stance, aiming to influence perception and provoke recall through concise, persuasive language.” Slogans leverage formatting tools like brevity or rhythm to create cognitive shortcuts. They encapsulate the essence of a brand, message, or ideological stance in a few words. Brevity enhances a slogan’s encoding into memory by condensing complex information into compact and digestible chunks. This makes it more likely to be encoded and retrieved as a single, coherent mental image. Brevity also reduces cognitive load, allowing the brain to process and store messages more efficiently in the working memory.

Rhythmic patterns, including rhyme, alliteration, and cadence, activate the phonological loop in working memory, which processes and retains auditory information. The predictable structure of rhythmic slogans facilitates rehearsal and recall, as the brain is more likely to encode repetitive, melodic phrases. Additionally, the “rhyme-as-reason” effect suggests that rhymed statements are perceived as more truthful, further reinforcing their mnemonic power. The impact of a slogan can be amplified through visual elements, such as typography, color, and imagery. Polysemiotic integration allows the message to be encoded through multiple sensory channels, increasing its impact and memorability. Polysemiotic messages leverage multiple communication formats by integrating text, image, sound, gesture, spatial layout, and color in mutually supporting ways. Each mode contributes distinct layers of meaning, and when integrated, they engage multiple sensory channels simultaneously. This multisensory engagement enhances attention, improves memory encoding through dual coding, and evokes emotional responses that simple verbal slogans cannot.

Psychology of Slogans

Elaboration Likelihood Model

There are a number of theoretical frameworks that can explain how people cognitively interact with slogans. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is an application of the dual processing model of cognitive psychology to the context of communication and persuasion. Essentially, people cognitively process messages through two distinct routes, peripheral (System 1) and central (System 2). The peripheral route processes information very quickly by assessing several contextual cues in the environment, like whether a message appears credible based on the technical quality of that message’s format. Almost everyone uses System 1 most of the time since our environment bombards us with more perceptual stimuli than we can ever hope to effectively process. Thus, we don’t think very much about System 1 stimulus, and this may lead us to uncritically process a slogan and fail to detect a threat from it. In general, slogans are designed to be processed rapidly using System 1 by making the message so simple but interesting that it gets processed uncritically.

The System 2 central route processes information in a more systematic and deliberate way. It focuses the brain on analyzing evidence and assessing argument quality. It is necessary for the person to be motivated enough to dedicate investing more time and effort required to process a message. However, it can lead one to more effectively reject propaganda messages by generating counterarguments that refute the message. It also plays an important role in persuasion by helping to encode the message into memory or by modifying an existing belief to incorporate new information. A slogan can be designed to trigger System 2 processing if it is conceptually dense, abstract, or intellectually provocative, provided the audience is motivated, educated, or deeply involved with the issue. A marketing example of this is the Capital One “What’s in Your Wallet” slogan. Framing it as a question could trigger System 2 reflection and evaluation.

Priming

Slogans can serve as a priming tool within the peripheral route by providing a critical heuristic cue. Priming is the psychological phenomenon where exposure to one stimulus (the prime) influences audience members’ responses to a subsequent stimulus. For example, if a cosmetic goods consumer repeatedly sees the L’Oréal brand’s slogan “Because You’re Worth It,” they are primed to interpret later ads through a self-worth lens. The slogan can positively prime the consumers’ emotions by invoking a sense of empowerment and deserved indulgence. This preconditions the consumer to experience positive emotions when they engage with other marketing messages. This can reduce potential resistance to the message while increasing persuasiveness. However, if the slogan is perceived by the audience to be a persuasion attempt, they may reject the message, creating a reverse prime that causes resistance to persuasion.

Illusory Truth Effect

Slogans have a hidden superpower through the mechanisms of repetition. Research proves that when a person is exposed to false information or propaganda repeatedly, even experts who know better start to accept the messages as being true. This is because repeated messages that are encoded into human memory increase the processing fluency (leveraging System 1 thinking) by making it easier for the brain to decode the message. Since we have seen that message before, the brain is more likely to process it uncritically, which inadvertently bypasses our cognitive defenses. When Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels famously stated, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” he inadvertently discovered this cognitive bias. This offers one powerful mechanism for the success of propaganda. If you compel people who initially don’t accept the slogan to publicly repeat it over time, then they could eventually internalize it.

Slogans in the Chinese Language

Chinese slogan culture emerged as a cultural phenomenon at least 3,000 years ago and is rooted in their language. Chinese classical language has very concise syntax and high information density, allowing more meaning to be communicated with fewer words. For instance, the classical quote from Sun Tzu, “If you know yourself and know your enemy, you will not be defeated in a hundred battles,” requires only eight characters to write. Thus, the nature of the language naturally lends itself to slogan usage. Another linguistic factor is that traditional Chinese is a tonal language, where pitch variations distinguish meaning between words. This tonal aspect contributes to the musicality of the language, especially in poetry. Classical Chinese poetry often adheres to strict tonal patterns and rhythmic structures, creating a harmonious and melodic quality that enhances its emotive power. A recent study of Chinese University marketing slogans revealed how they often incorporate poetic elements from classical Chinese literature. This musicality enhances cognitive fluency and the cognitive processing of slogans. Thus, the Chinese language seems as if it were designed to enhance System 1 central processing. Slogans were a common method of communicating complex philosophical and religious ideas. For example, “The universe and the individual unite,” which reflects the Daoist belief that all things in reality are interconnected into a single whole.

Slogans in Chinese Collectivist Culture

Slogans also fit well within the collectivist nature of Chinese culture and its accompanying high context communication style. Collectivist societies emphasize the creation and maintenance of societal harmony through the pursuit of group goals, social cohesion, and moral conformity over personal autonomy and welfare. People must align their thoughts and behaviors with the needs, norms, and goals of the group. Slogans support group harmony by condensing group values and norms into simple and repeatable formulas that serve as moral and social guideposts. They tell people what to believe, what to prioritize, and how to behave without lengthy debate or individual interpretation, while creating an opportunity for performative declarations of loyalty and belonging. A recent study of Chinese commercial advertising slogans revealed that their meanings were rooted in traditional Confucian philosophy, which undergirds Chinese culture. For instance, the emphasis is on maintaining societal harmony by showing respect for others, especially those with higher social status. A common slogan is “Serve the People,” encapsulates the moral mandate that individuals subordinate and sacrifice personal desires to the needs of the collective.

East Asians and other collectivist cultures have a unique communication style that supports the maintenance of group harmony, essential for collectivist cultures. High-context communication style conveys meaning implicitly through more indirect methods like non-verbal communication or ambiguous verbal messages. On the other hand, Westerners with an individualistic culture use a low context communication style. It emphasizes direct verbal messaging with explicit meanings that reduce ambiguity and increase clarity. Inter-group conflict is considered less undesirable in these cultures, compared to collectivist ones who avoid or mitigate conflict through this style. However, high-context styles can create ambiguity that people need to interpret. Thus, high-context communicators search the information environment for contextual cues present in that situation to aid in interpretation.

For the CCP, slogans are high-context, dense symbolic packages loaded with unstated assumptions, ambiguities, and coded expectations throughout the political discourse. The Chinese slogan, “One Country, Two Systems,” describes Hong Kong and Macau’s integration into China. Low context communicators would interpret this phrase as being relatively clear: two different economic and political systems under one sovereign government. However, high context communicators understand that this message is loaded with unstated assumptions and coded expectations like the freedoms Hong Kong enjoys is only tolerated as long as they do not challenge CCP authority.

Contemporary Slogan Use in China

The CCP defines a slogan as “Concise, powerful language forms used to promote Party ideology, mobilize the masses, and guide public opinion.” In contemporary China, research shows that slogans serve four primary purposes. The first is political indoctrination to help citizens adopt the desired version of the CCP’s Marxist ideology. While also instilling a sense of national unity, patriotism, and loyalty to the CCP. Many Chinese public agencies use “service slogans” that clarify how an organization’s employees should behave and communicate with the public. The second is social control through the enforcement of social norms that create compliance with the CCP’s vision of a harmonious society. By promoting specific behaviors and discouraging others, they function as instruments of social regulation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, offensive and negatively toned slogans using dark (gallows) humor were used by the CCP to demonize people who failed to follow government-specified safety mandates. These people were framed as harming the collective through a lack of filial piety, a sense of shame, and moral rectitude that destabilized Chinese society.

The third is public relations, whereby slogans serve as a guide to all Chinese communication professionals and journalists who derive themes and messages from them. This helps project a positive image of the CCP and its policies both domestically and internationally. Also, during COVID-19, Chinese communication professionals based in large cities had to contend with advancing the government’s health communications messaging for less advanced rural areas. They used CCP-approved slogans to develop health messages tailored to rural audiences. The fourth is cultural influence, whereby the CCP’s approved version of Chinese cultural practices are advanced. For instance, they want citizens to reject undesired cultural forms like the Falun Gong. A slogan to demonize the Falun Gong as deviants states, “Be on the lookout for cults, build harmony,” which symbolically places them outside of Chinese culture despite the fact that the movement is thoroughly based in traditional Chinese culture.

More recently, Chinese scholars have advanced the “slogan politics” approach that argues that when CCP slogans are presented, they are not finalized policy strategies. Instead, political slogans are a method of engaging key domestic stakeholders within China in a dialogue to develop and gain consensus for ideas, as a tool for enhancing the legitimacy of an otherwise authoritarian system. Externally and in a communication context, slogans allow for the pre-testing of themes, gauging foreign public and elite opinion, which if successful could eventually translate in propaganda. Since slogan politics scholars discuss the policy and strategy discourse as a task for experts and other elites, slogans might be meant to serve more of a propaganda role for the common people.

Rhetorical Entrapment

The CCP’s three warfare’s doctrine attempts to employ public opinion warfare, to shape the battlefield in their favor. Slogans fit into public opinion warfare, which is defined as “creating a favorable public opinion environment to seize political initiative and military victory” through “comprehensively using all types of media means and information resources to struggle against the enemy.” The CCP has used slogans to create rhetorical traps that would enable it to outmaneuver an adversary in the public opinion domain. Rhetorical entrapment occurs when a state or actor uses language that appears benign, moral, or widely acceptable, such as appeals to peace, development, or cooperation, but embeds within it strategic constraints that leave adversaries with no good rhetorical response. The trap works because rejecting the language makes the opponent appear hostile, arrogant, or hypocritical, while accepting it may require them to concede strategic ground or legitimize a competing narrative. When a targeted nation acknowledges the slogan’s language but refuses to align its behavior with China’s strategic expectations, its entire propaganda apparatus would attempt to influence and shape global media coverage about it.

The CCP could effectively utilize slogans as psychological warfare within the West by co-opting Marxist language to frame authoritarian principles as social justice imperatives. By aligning Chinese slogans with progressive causes like economic equality, racial justice, or anti-imperialism, the CCP could obscure their ideological intent, framing resistance as hypocrisy or betrayal of leftist principles. For example, slogans emphasizing ‘common prosperity’ or ‘collective progress’ could be strategically introduced through Western Marxist activists, compelling audiences to adopt CCP-aligned narratives under the guise of social justice. Utilizing the illusory truth effect, activists could be radicalized through the repletion of these propaganda tools.

Conclusion

Chinese slogans are not ornamental; they are strategic tools of political control, cultural signaling, and international persuasion. Their rhythmic simplicity, emotional framing, and repeated exposure foster internalization without overt resistance, normalizing authoritarian values as universal moral imperatives. To counter these narratives, democratic states must learn to decode slogans as rhetorical traps that structure thought and constrain dissent, transforming language into a weapon of ideological.

About The Author

Douglas Wilbur
Douglas S. Wilbur, Ph.D. is a former US Army information operations officer with four deployments. After the military, he earned his Ph.D. in strategic communication from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His research specialty is in propaganda and information warfare.

12. The Meaning of Drone-Enabled Infantry Striking Beyond Line of Sight

And every infantryman should have angels on his shoulders.

And the unit logistics trains would need 3D Printers to keep producing replacement drones and sustain the front line forces. And the logistics soldiers would need their own drones for their security against both enemy SOF and for counter drone operations.

Excerpts:

The future infantry platoon might incorporate drone formations and fight alongside them, bleed beside them, and win because of them. Moreover, just as the United States has trained soldiers to fire, maneuver, and survive, there may be a need to prepare machines to do the same.

There might be a need for new drills, formations, and instincts — not just for soldiers but also for the metal warriors hovering on the battlefield.

Victory will belong to those who integrate unmanned systems into the very core of their tactical thinking, not just by issuing drones but by rewriting doctrine.

If the last century of infantry warfare was defined by trenches, machine guns, and mechanization, then the next will be shaped by what happens in the skies just above them. The future belongs to those who can fight — and win — in the air littoral.

The Meaning of Drone-Enabled Infantry Striking Beyond Line of Sight – War on the Rocks

Antonio Salinas, Mark Askew, and Jason P. LeVay

warontherocks.com · June 23, 2025

For centuries, infantry attacks have begun with a cacophony of eardrum-splitting gunfire. However, today, many engagements are initiated by the unflinching eyes of drones.

Now the ability of infantry to effectively engage targets is no longer limited to human soldiers’ line of sight. While weapon systems such as mortars, anti-tank guided missiles, man-portable rockets, and grenade launchers fired at high angles significantly extended engagement ranges, they still required a human soldier to be present with the weapon system to operate it or needed a forward observer to see, acquire, and coordinate effective fires. What distinguishes drone-enabled infantry is the fusion of sensor and shooter into a single, remotely operated platform. Crucially, the infantry soldier or forward observer no longer needs to be physically near the weapon or the target area, shifting not just engagement geometry but also the risk calculus and tactical flexibility of infantry formations. Drone-enabled infantry has extended the range of contact well beyond visual range. This new sight capability, which can easily extend to 20-kilometer ranges, has decentralized the kill chain and altered the relationship between tactical maneuver forces and fires.

Squads and platoons can now scout and initiate attacks across vast distances. Once reserved for higher headquarters, the ability to see and strike is now organic at the lowest tactical levels.

Much like how indirect fire changed the infantry’s ability to strike targets beyond the range of machine guns, the adoption of drones alters how infantrymen can use force. Platoons that once placed fire within a few hundred meters can now influence areas spanning more than a dozen miles that were previously held by a battalion. Mechanized combined arms warfare dominated engagements in the last century. It seems likely that the ability to integrate tactics with drones in the airspace above friendly formations will be just as important, if not more so, in the next era.

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The Air Littoral: The New Key Terrain

Once considered irrelevant to small-unit tactics, the airspace up to 1,000 feet above the battlefield embodies this new concept of an “air littoral.” In Ukraine and elsewhere, gaining access to and control over the low-altitude battlespace is becoming increasingly important for even the most basic battlefield activities.

One reason is that control of the air littoral influences who has the initiative in close combat. Drones used for surveillance and/or as loitering munitions can be quickly repurposed for targeting. When combined with fires, these systems’ persistent visibility allows lower tactical echelons to exert control that far exceeds the ranges of any current direct-fire weapon systems.

The consequences of this shift are important for modern security experts to understand. The integration of drones into infantry formations, down to the squad level, flattens traditional command-and-control kill chains — enabling platoons to contest and control the air littoral. Troop movements, staging areas, command-and-control nodes, and sustainment capabilities have long been vulnerable to artillery strikes when identified by ISR assets under the command of higher headquarters. What is changing today is not the vulnerability but rather who can observe, target, and exploit it. Now, platoons — once dependent on battalion or brigade coordination — can identify, track, and strike targets directly. This new platoon- and even squad-level capability vastly compresses the time, coordination, and geography required to deliver violent force. Once blind beyond its traditional range card, the platoon can now shape the battlefield miles away.

This is a battlefield where visibility equals control and control equals survivability.

Units that lose control over the air littoral will be vulnerable to enemy fire and will be combat ineffective long before they can close with the enemy. Old kill zones existed within the maximum effective range of rifles and machine guns. But today, the new engagement envelope appears to encompass every area that the drone can observe.

From Drone Squad to Bayonet Drone

One way to attack this challenge is to restructure regular infantry platoons into two rifle squads, a weapons squad, and a drone squad. The drone squad, equipped with four larger drones, can be divided into reconnaissance, hunter-killer, counter-drone, and fire coordination roles. This concept still has merit, but it may not be enough for future infantry engagements.

Today, a platoon’s ability to strike targets appears to be increasingly influenced by the number of airborne sensors it can deploy in the air littoral, providing the capability to put eyes in the sky and launch strikes before the enemy can react. Just as the Spanish tercios evolved from pike-dense formations into leaner, firepower-focused units, today’s infantry might want to consider fielding a distributed swarm of sensor shooters. Modern infantry forces may want to ensure that drone capabilities are fielded at the lowest level. Perhaps every soldier should carry a drone, and every rifleman should become a drone operator.

One option, now that at least one American company is producing hundreds of $2,000 first-person view drones per week, could be that every infantry soldier, from the platoon leader to the rifleman, carries a lightweight, deployable “bayonet drone” — a lightweight scout that can be launched in seconds, significantly extending a soldier’s senses beyond his or her immediate line of sight. Using their “bayonet drones,” riflemen can scan rooftops, peek behind walls, clear a trench, or detect an ambush across a valley. Moreover, with a grenade, C-4, or even a shaped charge strapped beneath its belly, it does not just scout: It kills. And the potential of this new lethality has senior leaders from the commandant of the Marine Corps to the secretary and chief of staff of the Army to House Armed Services Committee members increasingly excited to get the capabilities into marines’ and soldiers’ hands.

In this new battlespace, whoever flies more sees more. Whoever sees more can strike faster. Moreover, whoever strikes faster survives. Every platoon should also consider the necessity of organic air littoral defense capabilities and drones for counter-drone missions.

This is not just about acquiring new equipment. It will be important to also train our infantrymen to understand this new instrument of violence. Employing drones should become as instinctive as shooting back at the enemy during the first precious and chaotic moments of a firefight. If adequately equipped, led, and trained, these decentralized, combined small-unit infantry-aviation sensor-strike groups can now themselves deliver violence that before was only achievable by traditional airpower or artillery.

Establishing Air Littoral Dominance

For decades, infantry combat followed a familiar rhythm. Vietnam veterans watching Iraq or Afghanistan recognized the scenes instantly: squads in contact maneuvering through alleys and irrigation canals, taking cover behind walls and boulders, and forming firing lines while waiting for artillery or air support to create the conditions needed for an assault. Despite advances in weaponry and communications, the character of ground combat remained unchanged — constrained by terrain, human eyesight, and the tempo of human movement.

But perhaps that rhythm is changing.

Future infantry engagements for U.S. forces should unfold, much like they are now for squads and platoons across the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, in distinct yet interconnected phases, influencing the character of ground combat. The new firefight begins in the air, not on the ground.

Phase 1: Set Conditions to Get Friendly Drones in the Air and Secure the Air Littoral

The first step of drone-enabled combat begins not on the ground but rather by securing drone dominance in the contested airspace above the platoon. Drone squads should be paired with man-portable anti-drone weapons such as electronic warfare jammers, shotguns, nets, and decoys, and these systems should be used to secure several decentralized launch sites. Soldiers should master drone launch procedures in case they make contact with enemy drones. Platoons must also develop coordination measures that enable drone operators to deconflict flight paths and targets.

Once the launch sites are secure, the first wave of drones to launch will be reconnaissance platforms paired with hunter-killer drones, fanning out to identify enemy drones in the battlespace. Once detected, hunter-killer drones will identify and immediately engage these enemy drones. The forward drone element will then maintain overwatch, preparing to deal with any enemy drone counterattacks.

The platoon that successfully secures this layer of battlespace will have a significant advantage in seizing the initiative and setting the conditions needed to close with the enemy. Failure means leaving the enemy reconnaissance-strike complex with the ability to mass its fires on friendly forces and destroy them before they can even close with the enemy’s ground forces.

Phase 2: Target and Strike the Enemy Infantry Force

Once friendly forces control the littoral airspace, the drones may pivot to engage human targets. Reconnaissance platforms will begin tagging the coordinates of enemy infantry, weapon systems, command nodes, and resupply points. Loitering munitions and first-person view drones will crash into machine gun teams, detonate inside buildings, and strike exposed squads. Drones will also provide coordinates for mortar, artillery, or missile strikes. Simultaneously, friendly drone operators will continue searching for enemy drone operators and reserving platforms to destroy them before they can launch.

This is the attritional phase in which enemy cohesion breaks down well before the friendly human platoon makes visual contact.

Phase 3: Support Human Infantry Movement to Close

With the enemy disrupted and the terrain mapped, the infantry platoon begins its advance. Now, the traditional work of the rifleman starts: maneuver, suppress, and seize. However, drone-enabled infantry can maneuver with a clearer picture, even if it’s not a perfect picture, of the battlespace than ever before. Every alley, every tree line, and every rooftop has been observed from above. Drone overwatch covers the flanks, monitors the ridgelines, and identifies targets in real time. Bounding overwatch becomes a vertical dance, with human fire teams below and drones above.

Humans still finish the fight. However, they now do so under the cover of their own flying eyes — many of which have an assortment of weapons ready to deliver if and when requested.

Phase 4: Actions on the Objective, Consolidation, and Airborne Pursuit

Once the objective is secured, drones remain overhead, scanning for counterattacks, providing overwatch during consolidation, and pursuing withdrawing enemy elements. The pursuit no longer ends at a wall or tree line or because of human exhaustion. It stretches for many kilometers. The withdrawing enemy forces, while safe from direct gunfire, continue to remain at risk of being targeted by friendly drones. Drone pursuit eliminates the need for costly human follow-on attacks and facilitates rapid exploitation of the enemy’s collapse. They may mirror and create small-scale, tactical highways of death not seen since the Gulf War.

Phase 5: Sustainment, Security, and Control of the Littoral

Even after securing the objective, the drones remain airborne. Medics treat casualties while leaders reorganize. Company- and battalion-level drones assist with resupplying and evacuating casualties. However, drones continue to orbit in the air — ready to cue fires, detect reinforcements, or deny enemy drones the opportunity to reenter the airspace. This persistent presence secures the battlespace and establishes conditions for follow-on operations.

Maintaining control of low-altitude airspace will remain an active and continuous mission. Unlike ground combat, airspace cannot be entrenched and seized. Instead, it must be continually fought over and dominated.

The side that can best establish the conditions for persistent control will gain an advantage over forces with only sporadic capabilities to achieve air littoral control. To accomplish this, the United States must adapt and integrate these systems more rapidly, train its soldiers and drones to work together effectively, and foster a command culture that encourages soldiers to recognize and exploit opportunities to fulfill the mission’s purpose as they emerge on the battlefield.

Rewrite the Infantry Manual

It appears that infantry combat has entered an age where striking the enemy is no longer dependent on human eyesight and where a platoon’s reach is measured not in meters but in miles. What was once the exclusive domain of forward observers, attack helicopters, and higher headquarters is now in the hands of rifle squads and junior leaders. The geometry of battle for a platoon equipped with drones is now a three-dimensional landscape, unfolding at distances previously unattainable for ground forces. It is important to note that this change is not only technological but requires a doctrinal evolution as well.

What remains unchanged is the infantry’s core mission: to close with and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver, repel assaults with direct fire, and seize ground through close combat and counterattack. That mission has endured through jungles, cities, deserts, and mountains and will endure into the drone age. Ground forces must still practice fire commands, machine-gun suppression, and mortar integration. The muscle memory of traditional battle drills — refined in blood from Normandy to Mosul to Kunar — cannot be discarded, as they will be needed when drones are attrited. However, those drills and methods must now evolve to survive with the realities of drone integration.

First-person view drones are not merely tools: They are influencing an era of warfare in which every squad acts as a sensor-shooter node, every platoon operates as a precision strike network, and every ridge, rooftop, and tree line can be scouted, scanned, or attacked within seconds. In this new battlespace, line of sight no longer imposes limits or provides sanctuary. This new reality of infantry combat requires a major doctrinal revision.

Perhaps the infantry should begin with the fundamentals, such as Battle Drill 1A: React to Direct Fire Contact While Dismounted. Currently, it instructs squads to return fire, seek cover, and maneuver to eliminate the threat. However, there may be a need to establish a parallel set of actions for drone-integrated units, such as deploying a reconnaissance drone under fire, identifying enemy positions from above, and cuing loitering munitions and other indirect fires to strike. Mastering this new facet of close combat can only enhance the survivability and lethal potential of our formations.

The future infantry platoon might incorporate drone formations and fight alongside them, bleed beside them, and win because of them. Moreover, just as the United States has trained soldiers to fire, maneuver, and survive, there may be a need to prepare machines to do the same.

There might be a need for new drills, formations, and instincts — not just for soldiers but also for the metal warriors hovering on the battlefield.

Victory will belong to those who integrate unmanned systems into the very core of their tactical thinking, not just by issuing drones but by rewriting doctrine.

If the last century of infantry warfare was defined by trenches, machine guns, and mechanization, then the next will be shaped by what happens in the skies just above them. The future belongs to those who can fight — and win — in the air littoral.

BECOME A MEMBER

Antonio Salinas is an active-duty U.S. Army officer and Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Following his coursework, he will teach at the National Intelligence University. Salinas has 26 years of military service in the U.S. Marine Corps and Army, where he has served as an Infantry officer, assistant professor in the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy, and Strategic Intelligence officer, with operational experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Siren’s Song: The Allure of War and Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine.

Mark Askew is an active-duty Army officer and military historian. He has over 20 years of military service as an Armor officer, assistant professor in the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy, and Army strategist, with operational experience in Iraq. Askew has a Ph.D. in military history at Texas A&M University and currently serves at U.S. Army Futures Command.

Jason P. LeVay teaches joint doctrine at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and is a doctoral student in the Security Studies program at Kansas State University. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and holds graduate degrees from Yale University and the National Intelligence University.

The views and opinions presented herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, or any part of the U.S. government. The appearance of or any reference to any commercial products or services does not constitute an Army or Defense Department endorsement of those products or services. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute an Army or Defense Department endorsement of the linked websites or the information, products, or services therein.

Image: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · June 23, 2025

13. Red Lines in Orbit: Deterrence, Sovereignty, and the Risk of Escalation in Space Conflict

Conclusion:

Space technologies and tactics that once seemed futuristic are already reshaping how wars will begin, and how they might escalate. If nations continue to rely on outdated legal frameworks and unspoken assumptions, they risk stumbling into a conflict that starts invisibly and spirals uncontrollably. Rather than vague calls for norms, what’s needed now are enforceable rules, concrete verification measures, and technical cooperation that match the speed and complexity of the modern space domain. Meeting this challenge will require sustained diplomatic engagement, multilateral commitment, and the integration of technical safeguards into the fabric of space governance. Only through proactive, collaborative governance can the international community hope to preserve space as a stable domain and prevent today’s silent risks from becoming tomorrow’s open conflicts.

Red Lines in Orbit: Deterrence, Sovereignty, and the Risk of Escalation in Space Conflict - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by DeLaine Mayer · June 23, 2025

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The next war may begin without a sound—in orbit, far above the battlefield. As satellite proximity operations, grappling technologies, and AI-enabled space systems proliferate, space is no longer just a technical domain; it is a new theater of power. Orbital assets are fast becoming the front line of great power confrontation, yet international norms and deterrence doctrines have not caught up, creating a world that is dangerously unprepared for the political and military consequences of space-based first strikes.

In March 2025, US Space Force General Michael A. Guetlein, the vice chief of space operations, revealed that American systems had observed “five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” a scenario he called “dogfighting in space.” China, along with the United States and other major space powers, is rapidly developing counterspace capabilities. These aren’t science-fiction weapons; they reflect a strategic shift. Satellites are the nervous system of modern warfare, vital for intelligence, navigation, and communication. Disabling an adversary’s satellites can blind its battlefield or situational awareness and create a powerful advantage in the early stages of conflict.

Unlike traditional warfare, there is no clear legal framework for what constitutes aggression in space. Satellite interference can be framed as a malfunction, a test, or a provocation, making it an ideal gray-zone tactic. The first move in the next major conflict may not come as a missile strike or cyberattack, but as a silent, deniable maneuver in orbit that signals war before the world even realizes it has begun, just like the February 2022 cyberattack on Viasat in the hours before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Orbital Infrastructure

Orbital infrastructures are vast, planet-spanning systems that materially and politically structure how we monitor, secure, and conceptualize threats to Earth. Columba Peoples and Tim Stevens describe them as “sociotechnical assemblages”—networks of satellites, ground stations, governance frameworks, and human expertise that link activity in space to politics, economics, and security on Earth.

Most people don’t realize how deeply embedded these systems are in daily life. Satellites power GPS navigation, enable global internet and phone service, forecast the weather, and monitor climate change. They support financial transactions, TV broadcasts, communications, and emergency response. Without them, much of the modern world—from logistics to banking—would slow down or stop entirely. They are part of the critical, invisible infrastructure that makes modern life possible, as essential and often overlooked as power lines, undersea cables, or air traffic control systems.

Militarily, satellites are indispensable. They enable real-time surveillance of troop movements, missile deployments, and naval activity, providing the awareness of the operational environment that modern commanders rely on. They support secure communications across continents and guide precision weapons using GPS. Some systems even provide early warning of missile launches, offering precious minutes to respond. In modern conflict, satellites aren’t a backdrop; they’re part of the battlefield.

These orbital infrastructures are more than tools of observation or communication; they are embedded in the machinery of modern statecraft. From coordinating humanitarian relief to supporting precision targeting and military operations, they blur the line between civilian and military systems. As their strategic value grows, so too does the need to define and defend their boundaries—before another state tests them in silence.

Satellite Tampering as a First Strike

Satellite tampering refers to any deliberate interference with a satellite’s function—increasingly seen as a potential first move in modern conflict. This can include jamming (blocking radio signals), dazzling (using lasers to blind sensors), cyber intrusion (hijacking or disabling a satellite remotely), or even physical manipulation (maneuvering near or pushing another satellite out of position). What makes satellite tampering so dangerous is that it can be done silently, without debris or explosions, making it both feasible and deniable. In a tense geopolitical moment, disrupting satellites could blind an opponent’s surveillance, sever communications, or degrade navigation, all without firing a single shot on the ground. Not only is this kind of interference invisible to the naked eye, but it can also be layered: Attackers may alter or erase diagnostic data itself, leaving operators uncertain whether a satellite is malfunctioning, compromised, or both. Recent events like GPS anomalies and a tanker collision near the Strait of Hormuz on June 17 demonstrate how invisible, electronic interference in space-based systems can have real-world, dangerous consequences without a traceable act of war.

Reports of “dogfighting in space”—with Chinese satellites maneuvering in synchronized, controlled formation, simulating close-range orbital combat—underscore how real and immediate this threat has become. While not openly hostile, these actions demonstrate the capability to trail, shadow, and potentially interfere with foreign satellites. Combined with advances in cyber and electronic warfare, these maneuvers suggest that space is shifting from a support domain to an active battlefield. The line between exercise and aggression is blurring, and satellite tampering is no longer theoretical. It has become a tool for signaling, disruption, and disabling critical systems in the opening minutes of conflict.

The Viasat attack during Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine shows how effective space-based disruption can be. Hours before Russian troops crossed the border, hackers deployed malware that crippled the KA-SAT satellite network, disabling tens of thousands of modems across Europe. The result was widespread communication outages, including within Ukraine’s military. By targeting a civilian-operated satellite system, Russia demonstrated how space-based infrastructure can be exploited for strategic gain, blinding and destabilizing an adversary before conventional warfare begins.

China has closely studied both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and drawn key lessons about the role of space infrastructure in modern warfare. From Russia’s early cyberattack on Viasat, China saw how disrupting satellite communications can cripple an adversary’s ability to coordinate, respond, and stay connected, making satellite interference a valuable tool for preinvasion advantage. At the same time, Ukraine’s rapid pivot to SpaceX’s Starlink showed the power of resilient, decentralized megaconstellations to restore connectivity, maintain command and control, and support both military and civilian functions in real time. Together, these lessons have shaped China’s approach to space warfare: Disable your opponent’s satellites early and ensure your own communications cannot be taken offline. This thinking is reflected in China’s push to build sovereign megaconstellations like Guowang and Qianfan, not just for commercial purposes, but to guarantee wartime resilience and strategic independence in orbit.

China’s Megaconstellations

Guowang and Qianfan are China’s planned satellite megaconstellations designed to provide global internet coverage while strengthening the country’s independence and resilience in space-based communications. Guowang, meaning “national network,” is expected to include around thirteen thousand satellites and will serve as a sovereign satellite internet system, led by state-owned enterprises such as the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. It is intended to offer secure broadband services domestically and globally, akin to Starlink, reducing reliance on external or nondomestic systems, while supporting both civilian and military operations. Qianfan, meaning “thousand sails,” is a parallel constellation with roughly fourteen thousand planned satellites, a fleet of orbiting assets working in coordinated formation.

While both projects are publicly positioned as commercial and technological ventures, they are deeply dual-use, designed to enable hardened, decentralized communications that can survive wartime disruption and operate independently of Western infrastructure.

Together, Guowang and Qianfan represent more than just technological ambition. They reflect China’s broader strategy to dominate orbital infrastructure, assert digital sovereignty, and ensure command-and-control continuity in a contested, congested information environment. In any future conflict, these constellations will be as critical to Chinese power projection as aircraft carriers or missile systems, just as Starlink has become indispensable to Ukraine.

The Need for a New Deterrence Theory

Deterrence theory is built on a simple premise: You prevent an adversary from taking an unwanted action (typically aggression) by making the cost of that action outweigh any potential benefit. Effective deterrence depends on three elements: capability (the ability to retaliate or respond), credibility (the ability to convince an adversary you will act), and communication (clear signaling of red lines and consequences).

A disabled satellite can be framed as a technical failure or an act of war. That ambiguity is what makes space so strategically volatile. Satellites malfunction regularly due to radiation, debris, or aging hardware. This natural uncertainty provides cover for deliberate interference. A rival state could jam, spoof, or physically disrupt a satellite while plausibly denying responsibility. But the operational impact is immediate: Intelligence is lost, communications break down, and targeting or navigation systems go dark. In a domain without clear rules of engagement or trusted verification mechanisms, a single orbital incident could spark a broader military crisis before decision-makers fully understand what happened.

As more nations deploy maneuverable satellites and integrate dual-use AI, the risk of accidental escalation is growing. In space, nearly everything is dual-use: The same satellite delivering internet or weather data may also support military surveillance or missile guidance. Without clear boundaries, even a routine orbital maneuver could be misinterpreted as a provocation, leading to real-world consequences far beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

To reduce the risk of miscalculation, new rules of engagement are urgently needed. These could include:

Proximity thresholds: minimum distances satellites must maintain from one another (though critics argue “minimum safe distance” concepts don’t work well in space).
Tamper warning protocols: mandated automated alerts or diplomatic notifications triggered whenever there is interference suspected in the command-and-control systems of national-security satellites, ensuring states are informed in near real time and ambiguity is reduced.
Shared anomaly detection standards: AI-driven protocols shared by satellite operators and defense actors to flag unexpected behaviors and note whether they are likely technical failures or intentional disruptions.
Emergency communications channels: “space hotlines” connecting major spacefaring nations for rapid deconfliction in the event of suspicious activity, similar to the Cold War–era “hotline” between Moscow and Washington.

Space technologies and tactics that once seemed futuristic are already reshaping how wars will begin, and how they might escalate. If nations continue to rely on outdated legal frameworks and unspoken assumptions, they risk stumbling into a conflict that starts invisibly and spirals uncontrollably. Rather than vague calls for norms, what’s needed now are enforceable rules, concrete verification measures, and technical cooperation that match the speed and complexity of the modern space domain. Meeting this challenge will require sustained diplomatic engagement, multilateral commitment, and the integration of technical safeguards into the fabric of space governance. Only through proactive, collaborative governance can the international community hope to preserve space as a stable domain and prevent today’s silent risks from becoming tomorrow’s open conflicts.

DeLaine Mayer developed and teaches New York University’s first graduate course on astropolitics, “Astropolitik: The Politics, Policies, and Technologies of Outer Space,” at the Center for Global Affairs. She holds an MS in space resources from the Colorado School of Mines and an MS in global affairs from NYU. Her work explores the intersections of emerging technology, international relations, geopolitics, and space.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: NASA Johnson

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by DeLaine Mayer · June 23, 2025

14. Iran threatens US bases in response to strikes on nuclear sites

Do we envision a Ukraine-like Operation Spiderweb against any of our overseas bases?

imagine even a minor attack using that concept could shut down the economy of any country that feared such a threat. Imagine if every shipping container had to be physically inspected when entering a country? What would that do to commerce?

That would be some serious revenge for the attack on Iran.

Excerpts:

Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said bases used by US forces could be attacked in retaliation.

"Any country in the region or elsewhere that is used by American forces to strike Iran will be considered a legitimate target for our armed forces," he said in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency.

"America has attacked the heart of the Islamic world and must await irreparable consequences."

Iran threatens US bases in response to strikes on nuclear sites

23 Jun 2025 07:30AM

(Updated: 23 Jun 2025 12:14PM)

channelnewsasia.com

WASHINGTON: Iran on Sunday (Jun 22) threatened US bases in the Middle East after massive air strikes that Washington said had destroyed Tehran's nuclear programme, though some officials cautioned that the extent of damage was unclear.

International concern focused on fears that the unprecedented US attacks would deepen conflict in the volatile region after Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran earlier this month.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said bases used by US forces could be attacked in retaliation.

"Any country in the region or elsewhere that is used by American forces to strike Iran will be considered a legitimate target for our armed forces," he said in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency.

"America has attacked the heart of the Islamic world and must await irreparable consequences."

US President Donald Trump urged Iran to end the conflict after he launched surprise strikes on a key underground uranium enrichment site at Fordow, along with nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz.

"We had a spectacular military success yesterday, taking the 'bomb' right out of their hands (and they would use it if they could!)" he said on social media.

And while Trump did not directly advocate regime change in the Islamic republic, he openly played with the idea - even after his aides stressed that was not a goal of American intervention.

"It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. "But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing earlier that Iran's nuclear programme had been "devastated," adding the operation "did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people".

Standing beside Hegseth, top US general Dan Caine said that while it would be "way too early" for him to determine the level of destruction, "initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction".

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile said his country's military strikes will "finish", once the stated objectives of destroying Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities have been achieved.

"We are very, very close to completing them," he told reporters.

TEHRAN PROTESTS

As Iran's leaders struck defiant tones, President Masoud Pezeshkian also vowed that the US would "receive a response" to the attacks.

People gathered on Sunday in central Tehran to protest against US and Israeli attacks, waving flags and chanting slogans.

In the province of Semnan east of the capital, 46-year-old housewife Samireh told AFP she was "truly shocked" by the strikes.

"Semnan province is very far from the nuclear facilities targeted, but I'm very concerned for the people who live near," she said.

In an address to the nation hours after the attack, Trump claimed success for the operation, and US Vice President JD Vance followed up on Sunday morning.

"We know that we set the Iranian nuclear programme back substantially last night," Vance told ABC.

But he also suggested Iran still had its highly enriched uranium.

"We're going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel," he said. "They no longer have the capacity to turn that stockpile of highly enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium."

Another Khamenei advisor, Ali Shamkhani, said in a post on X that "even if nuclear sites are destroyed, game isn't over, enriched materials, indigenous knowledge, political will remain".

Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that attacks on nuclear facilities could cause radiation leaks, but the IAEA had not detected any.

RETALIATION RISK

Israel's military was checking results of the US raid on the deeply buried nuclear facility in Fordow, with a spokesman saying it was uncertain if Iran had already removed enriched uranium from the site.

The main US strike group was seven B-2 Spirit bombers that flew 18 hours from the American mainland to Iran. Trump said on Sunday the planes had landed safely on US soil after the marathon mission.

In response to the attack, which used over a dozen massive "bunker-buster" bombs, Iran's armed forces targeted sites in Israel, including Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, with at least 23 people wounded.

Nine members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed on Sunday, local media reported, while three people were killed after an ambulance was also struck in Israeli attacks on central Iran.

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed more than 400 people so far, Iran's health ministry said. Iran's attacks on Israel have killed 24 people, according to official figures.

The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, which had been mediating Iran-US nuclear talks, criticised the US strikes and called for de-escalation.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday warned against an "uncontrolled escalation" in the Middle East, as he and his German and British counterparts called on Tehran "not to take any further action that could destabilise the region".

channelnewsasia.com

15. Iran Update Special Report, June 22, 2025, Evening Edition

Iran Update Special Report, June 22, 2025, Evening Edition

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-special-report-june-22-2025-evening-edition

Russia condemned the recent US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 amid reports that Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 23. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) condemned the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22. The Russian MFA claimed that the US strikes are a violation of the UN Charter and that the UN Security Council is obliged to respond. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the world will descend into chaos if countries are allowed to interpret the right to self-defense in the UN Charter as they wish. Lavrov claimed that the US strikes marked a new, dangerous escalation during a phone call with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on June 22. CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Presidential Special Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries, Kirill Dmitriev, claimed on June 22 that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is en route to Moscow and will meet with Putin on June 23.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) implicitly threatened to attack US bases in the region in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The IRGC released a statement on June 22 warning the United States that it should “expect regrettable responses.” The IRGC said that the “number, dispersion, and size” of US bases in the region has “doubled [the US’] vulnerability.” Iran has previously attacked US forces in the region in response to US military action against Iran. Iranian media have widely circulated the IRGC statement as well as other threats to attack US interests in the region. A large majority of the sources are inaccessible because Iran has reportedly imposed a ”near-total internet blackout” across the country. An outlet affiliated with a cultural and ideological organization subordinate to the supreme leader posted a graphic on X outlining steps Iran could take in retaliation for US strikes. The graphic included Iranian attacks on US bases, activation of the Axis of Resistance, cyber-attacks on US infrastructure, and efforts to disrupt global markets. CTP-ISW reported in its June 22 Morning Update that the Iranian parliament conditionally approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, which would disrupt international shipping. The Supreme National Security Council still needs to issue a final approval.

Key Takeaways:

Iranian leaders uncharacteristically gave no explicit vow of retaliation against the United States. The closest was an IRGC statement warning of “regrettable responses.” This absence of coordinated threats may reflect the extent to which Iranian leaders are struggling to communicate with one another, as they isolate themselves to evade Israeli strikes.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi will travel to Moscow and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 23. The Kremlin condemned the US strikes and issued veiled threats that are likely meant to stoke panic among Western audiences, including key decision makers.

Israel continued its strike campaign against Iran, targeting missile, drone, and air defense capabilities. One of the strikes targeted equipment that Iran uses to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles, which will likely disrupt further the Iranian ability to reconstitute its degraded missile forces.

16. Xi Jinping’s Costly Inheritance

Excerpts:

Even Xi Jinping has admitted that the torment he experienced as a young person led to doubts about the state and the party. Indeed, he was convinced that his ordeal was worse than what many others endured during the Cultural Revolution, since he was the son of a leader who had been purged earlier than most senior revolutionaries. Nevertheless, he has spoken with great pride of the toughness these horrific experiences inculcated in him. And he has asserted that his ideals and convictions are unshakable precisely because he went through a period of confusion before recognizing that only the party’s path was the right one.

Instead of turning him away from the party, these experiences seem to have led Xi to subscribe to a cause for which his father suffered so much and to seek to regain pride and legacy for a family that had been humiliated so many times. With that in mind, he followed his father into politics. But will future generations feel the same way as their parents? Xi believes that China’s Western adversaries want to instigate young people today to demand radical political change. To combat this danger, Xi hopes to inspire China’s youth with a mission of national rejuvenation, of sacrifice, of “eating bitterness” for the greater good.

Some will inevitably be proud to accept that task. But others may hear Xi Jinping’s call not as a rallying cry but as a weary echo of the past. Many young Chinese people might be more interested in living less ardent lives than what Xi demands of them. The Xi family story raises questions about just how these young people can be won over. A message of suffering and struggle can indeed be meaningful for some—but for others, it may only lead to alienation.

Xi Jinping’s Costly Inheritance

Foreign Affairs · by More by Joseph Torigian · June 23, 2025

How His Father’s Travails Defined China’s Leader—and the Country He Rules

Joseph Torigian

June 23, 2025

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his father, Xi Zhongxun Illustration by Foreign Affairs. Photo Source: Reuters

JOSEPH TORIGIAN is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University and the author of The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping.

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In 1980, Xi Zhongxun, a major Chinese Communist Party heavyweight and the father of the current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, visited one of the premier tourist attractions of central eastern Iowa: the Amana Colonies, a German heritage site founded on communitarian principles, now known for beer and crafts. The experience shook him. At 67 years old, Xi was leading a delegation of provincial governors to the United States. It was a historic moment in China’s opening to Western business and investment. Xi, as leader of the southern province of Guangdong, was at the forefront of that process. Guangzhou, the provincial capital, had just seen the inauguration of the first U.S. consulate outside Beijing. Xi was also launching the Special Economic Zones—areas designed to attract foreign businesses—that would symbolize China’s new relationship with the outside world.

The Americans at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations who staffed the trip remembered Xi as a friendly and charismatic man, the kind of person who would make sure his translators had a glass of water. Yet he would sometimes go quiet as if he were preoccupied and could come across as reserved and distant.

That changed at the Amana Colonies. According to one person who was present, Xi was enthralled as he listened to the tour guide. His reaction was so strong that it seemed as if he “became a different guy,” according to a U.S. foreign service officer.

That change probably occurred because Xi saw in the heritage site a frightening possibility. Here was a community built on collective and utopian principles that had decided 88 years after its founding to disband. In other words, it was a story about how a communist society had reduced itself to a tourist destination.

At the time, a few years after the death of Mao Zedong, Xi and his comrades were worried that what they had built with all their sacrifices would not endure. From Xi’s position as governor of Guangdong, it did not look good. Tens of thousands of people were fleeing the poverty of the communist mainland for capitalist Hong Kong. New economic ties with the outside world could help stem the tide and create prosperity, but fears of Western ideological infiltration were especially palpable in Guangdong because of its proximity to the British colony. Young people in Guangzhou were taking to the streets to demand that the party move faster in the new direction of “reform and opening.” And even though Mao’s chaotic tenure had warned the party about the dangers of strongman rule and the explosiveness of succession politics, a new autocrat in Beijing, Deng Xiaoping, was using Machiavellian means to defeat Mao’s initial successor, the more consensus-oriented Hua Guofeng.

Soon after his trip to the United States, Xi moved to work in Beijing to assume a weighty position in the Secretariat, the party’s “brain.” It placed him at the very center of debates about how to save the revolution.

His son Xi Jinping has now inherited that mission. Inspired by his father, the son dreams of no less than breaking the cycles of dynastic collapse that have marked Chinese history for millennia. And he wants to achieve that through continuous “self-revolution,” a campaign that aims to keep the revolutionary spirit alive by calling on the Chinese people to continually study the lives of the founding generation.

In charting the party and the country’s way forward, he is no doubt informed by his father’s struggles through the convulsions that shook China in the twentieth century. A close examination of the life of Xi Zhongxun reveals the profound challenges that have marked party politics from the beginning, in particular in terms of the dilemmas posed by the role of ideology in Chinese political life and the party’s plans for succession. They are dilemmas that can be managed, not problems to be solved. And they provide essential context for understanding what Xi Jinping is trying to achieve today and whether he will succeed in the future.

THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

The elder Xi endured extraordinary suffering for the sake of the cause, at the hands of both Nationalist foes and the Communists themselves. His travails simultaneously reveal the dangers of taking ideology too seriously and not seriously enough. After his release from a Nationalist prison when he was 15 years old, Xi did not rekindle his enthusiasm for revolution by reading Karl Marx. As he later told his son, it was a novel, The Young Wanderer, by Jiang Guangci, that he found most inspiring. Its protagonist endures one disaster after another and concludes that “the more pain that evil society brought me, the more powerfully did my resistance develop.”

Xi, then, was sensitive to the importance of cultural products for the communist cause. In 1952, he became minister of propaganda. He was tasked with educating a country of hundreds of millions of people about communism and why they should sacrifice to build it.

But ideology not only motivated Xi and helped him explain why the party deserved devotion. It also nearly got him killed. When the party persecuted him, which it did on numerous occasions, it was because differences of opinion were understood as manifestations of ideological heresy. That is why even though it was a novel that inspired Xi to stay with the revolution in 1928, it was yet another novel, Liu Zhidan, that got him purged in 1962. Mao concluded that Xi’s decision to allow a woman cadre to write the book—a fictionalized narrative of a leading revolutionary from the Northwest—was a manifestation of “class struggle.” Xi was dispatched into the political wilderness for 16 years.

His fall foreshadowed one of the great tragedies of Chinese history: the Cultural Revolution. During those frenzied years in the 1960s and 1970s, authorities banished Xi from the capital and subjected him to solitary confinement and physical abuse. After Mao’s death in 1976, leaders recognized that the Cultural Revolution was such a failure that the party would have to change in its aftermath. When Xi returned to work in Beijing in 1981, he faced a new question: how to maintain a sense of idealism and conviction when no one could explain what communism really was anymore, a reality that even Xi acknowledged.

The elder Xi endured extraordinary suffering for the sake of the cause.

Xi knew that achieving greater economic development would give the party the legitimacy it desperately needed. Yet he was also afraid of what might happen if that new economic model caused people to lose faith in the party’s ideological commitments. He worried about how China would change with the arrival of Western investment, the introduction of market mechanisms, and the use of material inducements to encourage hard work. Xi wanted to give space to new voices that could justify the party’s new economic direction, or even provide new ideas about how to achieve limited political reforms, but he was afraid of chaos and wanted the loudest critics to stop creating problems for him. There was always the risk that he could be associated with more strident calls for change and earn the ire of his superiors. It was a recipe for confusion and dysfunction. Throughout the 1980s, the party regularly launched crackdowns that raised fears of another Cultural Revolution and then rapidly pulled back when the campaigns threatened economic growth.

Finally, there were consequences for the party elite itself. In 1987, after student protests, Deng purged General Secretary Hu Yaobang from the leadership. The party accused Hu of “bourgeois liberalization.” Xi, his close associate, was said to have “gone even further” than Hu, according to Yang Shangkun, a Politburo member. Xi hated the charges. He knew that Hu never opposed Deng. The real problem was that balancing reform and opening with conservative principles had proved to be a near-impossible task. And Hu and Xi were blamed when the contradiction became too obvious to ignore.

Xi Jinping faces the same problem of balancing growth with ideology that his father did, but he has his own approach to solving it. The son clearly cares about economic development. Yet he is also preoccupied with instilling a sense of idealism and conviction in both the party and the rest of the Chinese population. He believes that the party should avoid the extremism of the Mao era but also needs to reinvigorate its members with a call to struggle and vigilance. He has tried to avoid the dramatic zigzags that marked the Deng period even as he has attempted to be flexible with limited course corrections.

The problem for him is that the “struggle” he demands of his people is an inherently ambiguous notion. Too much and too little are both dangerous. As the economy slows down, the challenge of meeting the material needs of China’s population while pursuing strategic and ideological goals is likely to get worse. Xi Jinping’s “middle path” approach could achieve the best of both worlds by using growth to facilitate greater security and stability (and vice versa), or it could simply be a recipe for muddling through.

THE HARDER THEY FALL

Party leaders might have done a better job with thorny ideological debates if they had evaluated different approaches dispassionately. But the problem was that ideology mixed with another issue, the most explosive one in the history of the party: succession politics.

And no one witnessed the pathologies and dangers of succession politics more closely than Xi Zhongxun. Xi served premier Zhou Enlai in the 1950s and early 1960s and then General Secretary Hu Yaobang during the 1980s. In other words, he witnessed firsthand the relationships between the Chinese paramount leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and their most significant deputies.

Xi would have seen how party politics at the very top was about much more than executing the senior leader’s wishes. The implementers were told to pursue multiple goals at the same time without clear guidance about which mattered more or how to achieve them. Commands would often include two contradictory orders separated by a “but”: make sure the campaign is thorough, they were told, but avoid going too far too fast. If they went too far in one direction, either to the “left” (too radical) or to the “right” (too cautious), they could face charges of ideological heresy. Setbacks might mean losing authority to someone else.

As paramount leaders, Mao and then Deng were often distant, vague, mercurial, and suspicious. If a deputy reported too much to them, they could feel overwhelmed and bogged down by details. But not enough communication could lead them to suspect that underlings were trying to run the country themselves. Private, frank meetings between leaders and their lieutenants were extremely rare, and even then there was no guarantee that they would reach a durable understanding. When deputies got it wrong, their bosses stripped them of power—or worse.

No one witnessed the dangers of succession politics more closely than Xi Zhongxun.

This was an almost impossible situation for deputies to navigate. Xi watched as Mao regularly humiliated Zhou Enlai. On one occasion in 1958, Zhou, after an excruciating self-criticism that lasted several hours, plaintively admitted to Xi that Mao had criticized him once again. Xi promised to share the blame with Zhou. He was shaken by how the experienced Zhou, who understood Mao better than most, could nevertheless face devastating setbacks.

Xi thought Mao’s personality cult during the Cultural Revolution was disastrous. He was thus disappointed as Deng became another despot over the course of the 1980s. Xi suggested to Hu that he should speak to Deng more to make sure they understood each other. But Hu thought he had Deng’s complete trust. He was wrong. When Deng said that he was planning to retire in 1986, Hu made a fatal mistake. He agreed that Deng should go, which in turn led Deng to conclude that Hu was eager to push him out. And so Hu was booted out. In the aftermath, it became clear to Xi that the party was less inclined to resolve the problems inherent in its leadership system than it was to repeat them.

Like Mao and Deng before him, Xi Jinping has arrogated to himself great power. His model of rule makes some sense given his father’s experiences. If the jealousies and insecurities that come with succession politics are dangerous, then it is no surprise that Xi has not picked a successor. A named successor might create more than one center of authority in the party, and Xi does not want to risk the instability that might result if he has to purge such a figure. If too much daylight between a leader and his deputies is a problem, then we can understand Xi’s decision to concentrate control in his own hands, as he did when he undermined Li Keqiang, the premier at the time, by restricting Li’s latitude to make decisions about the economy.

Yet those are only temporary solutions. Sooner or later, Xi will be tempted to pick and test a successor. As he ages, he may lose energy and want to focus on bigger issues, which will mean delegating more authority to others. The same problems that tormented his father could reappear.

FATHER AND SON

At the twilight of his career, in 1990, just a few months after the People’s Liberation Army massacred many of the young protesters who had called for change in Tiananmen Square, Xi Zhongxun assumed one of his last titles: co-chairman of the Care for the Next Generation Committee. It was a fitting coda to a life that had been marked by constant worry about an existential question: Would younger and future generations accept the continuing legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party?

For Xi, of course, it was not just a professional concern but a personal one, too. He wanted his children to be just as dedicated to the cause as he was. He regaled them with stories of the revolution to inspire them and imposed brutal discipline to familiarize them with collective values.

Yet his children saw something else, as well. They saw how the party that Xi served executed policies that brought tragedy to the Chinese people. They saw the humiliation, persecution, exile, and incarceration to which the party subjected Xi. And they saw the guilt and shame he experienced as both a victim and a victimizer. They witnessed the same tragedy but lived very different lives. One of Xi’s children, Heping, committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution. Another came to associate with veteran pro-reform officials and intellectuals. Others made a lot of money in business ventures.

Xi’s children saw how the party that he served brought tragedy to the Chinese people.

Even Xi Jinping has admitted that the torment he experienced as a young person led to doubts about the state and the party. Indeed, he was convinced that his ordeal was worse than what many others endured during the Cultural Revolution, since he was the son of a leader who had been purged earlier than most senior revolutionaries. Nevertheless, he has spoken with great pride of the toughness these horrific experiences inculcated in him. And he has asserted that his ideals and convictions are unshakable precisely because he went through a period of confusion before recognizing that only the party’s path was the right one.

Instead of turning him away from the party, these experiences seem to have led Xi to subscribe to a cause for which his father suffered so much and to seek to regain pride and legacy for a family that had been humiliated so many times. With that in mind, he followed his father into politics. But will future generations feel the same way as their parents? Xi believes that China’s Western adversaries want to instigate young people today to demand radical political change. To combat this danger, Xi hopes to inspire China’s youth with a mission of national rejuvenation, of sacrifice, of “eating bitterness” for the greater good.

Some will inevitably be proud to accept that task. But others may hear Xi Jinping’s call not as a rallying cry but as a weary echo of the past. Many young Chinese people might be more interested in living less ardent lives than what Xi demands of them. The Xi family story raises questions about just how these young people can be won over. A message of suffering and struggle can indeed be meaningful for some—but for others, it may only lead to alienation.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Joseph Torigian · June 23, 2025

17. Europe’s Two-Front War

Excerpts:

Unless Trump returns to a more conventional American foreign policy, the gulf between Washington and its allies will continue to grow even as attacks on the liberal order multiply. In the best-case scenario, Europeans will pull themselves together over time into an effective geopolitical and geoeconomic force that is assertive, self-confident, and capable. They would make good use of the assets available within the European Union and their connections with allies such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. European policymakers are now laying the foundations of this future. In it, the United States would shoulder fewer burdens but also exercise less influence.

If Trump continues on his current track and European countries fail to coalesce, the alliance’s toxic codependence will only get worse. Token or divided European rearmament efforts would not provide for continent-wide security needs or deter future Russian aggression. Financial and economic interdependence would still tie the United States to European security, but Washington would be increasingly unwilling to pay for it. China’s attempts to take advantage of this dispute by deepening its presence in Europe would be a constant source of tension. Power vacuums would emerge in the Middle East and Africa.

NATO summits have rarely been considered exciting critical junctures when history could be seen going down one path rather than another. This year is different. What happens at the alliance’s June meeting and after will cap a season—or cap an era.

Europe’s Two-Front War

Foreign Affairs · by More by Gideon Rose · June 23, 2025

Putin, Trump, and the Future of NATO

June 23, 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels, June 2025 Yves Herman / Reuters

GIDEON ROSE is an Axel Springer Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

ERIK JONES is Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and a Nonresident Scholar at Carnegie Europe.

More by Erik Jones

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In the first half of the twentieth century, Europe was the most militarized and violent region on the planet. By the early twenty-first, it had become the least militarized and least violent, a model of peace, cooperation, and transnational integration. But as Europeans concentrated on building a calmer future, others were resurrecting a more tumultuous past. In recent years, challenges from Russian aggression to Chinese mercantilism to American abandonment have revealed just how unprepared a demilitarized Europe is to handle old-fashioned power politics.

Russia’s seizure of Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014 and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in 2016 were wake-up calls. But after a flurry of concern, Europe’s major powers rolled over and went back to sleep. Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine, in 2022, got their full attention, leading to increases in defense spending, reductions in vulnerability, and substantial support for Kyiv. But in absolute terms, the changes were still small, and it was the United States that continued to bear primary responsibility for military aid to Ukraine, as well as for European security more generally.

Then came Trump’s second election victory. The post–World War II order was founded on a central bargain: the United States would use its extraordinary power to provide international public goods such as peace, security, and an increasingly open global economic system, and Europe, Japan, and other allies would bandwagon with Washington rather than balance against it. Although generations of U.S. policymakers tried to get other NATO members to contribute more to their own defense, they stuck with the bargain even when those partners refused because the broad benefits the United States received from consensual hegemony outweighed the costs and risks of securing it.

The second Trump administration is no longer convinced of that. It has raised old concerns about burden sharing with a new urgency and a new antipathy, bluntly telling U.S. allies that they need to renegotiate the bargain or else. For the first time in three-quarters of a century, it is now an open question whether the United States will continue to shoulder much of the burden of providing for European security—and how other members of NATO would react if Washington stopped doing so. Given what has taken place this spring, this week’s NATO summit, in The Hague, is likely to be one of the most significant meetings in the organization’s history, for it will address how much Europeans are ready to invest in their own security and how long and how far the United States will remain committed to the joint enterprise.

TRUMP’S REVOLUTION

Europeans knew that the close partnership under the Biden administration would inevitably yield to a frostier and more distant approach on Trump’s return to the White House, and they braced themselves for it. But even pessimists were shocked by how aggressively the new team in Washington shook things up. On issue after issue, Trump’s team seemed determined to break radically with the past, ushering in a very new (yet simultaneously very old) approach to American policy—one that rejected the postwar liberal international order in favor of a return to nineteenth-century great-power predation. Along the way, the administration recast the U.S. commitment to European security from a mutually beneficial partnership to a sucker’s game that enabled gluttonous free-riding at Americans’ expense.

As soon as he was back in the White House, Trump started coercing Washington’s closest allies, musing on a number of occasions about seizing territory from NATO members such as Canada and Denmark. His administration detained innocuous European travelers as part of a crackdown on immigration and gutted funding for foreign aid, democracy promotion, international education, science and public health, environmental protection, and other instruments of American soft power, all while trying to extend control over the rest of the U.S. government and civil society. Trump launched a massive trade war against the entire world, threatening to destroy the global economy unless other countries agreed to pay tribute. And he seemed to switch sides in the war in Ukraine, temporarily cutting off military and intelligence support to Kyiv, demanding repayment for past aid, and berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, even as he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and supported Russia everywhere from cyberspace to the United Nations.

The relationship among NATO members will never be quite the same.

In early February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a NATO meeting that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” suggesting that Ukraine would have to cede a significant amount of territory as part of any settlement and making clear that the United States would not help secure the country after one had been reached. A few days later, Vice President JD Vance told attendees of the Munich Security Conference that mainstream European political establishments were a greater threat to their countries than Putin’s Russia. And lest anyone think the messages were simply posturing, Hegseth and Vance were caught saying similar things in private one month later. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance wrote in the infamous Signal chat revealed by the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg—to which Hegseth responded, “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Stunned European leaders were galvanized into action. In March, the new German government suddenly abandoned the country’s national debt brake and pledged to spend an additional 500 billion euros (approximately $540 billion) on infrastructure and up to 600 billion euros (about $650 billion) more on defense. The United Kingdom started caucusing with its neighbors once again, and the French talked about using their independent nuclear deterrent to replace a possibly receding U.S. umbrella. European leaders embraced Zelensky and committed themselves to helping protect his country from Russia. Some sent guns, some sent money, and some sent money for Ukraine to make its own guns. In May, the European Commission released a plan to add 150 billion euros (about $170 billion) in loans for military preparedness, with the possibility of hundreds of billions more later on.

It would take a lot of time, effort, and money, but optimistic observers claimed to see a miraculous transformation underway. “The events of this year mark a turning point in the transatlantic relationship,” wrote Arancha González Laya, the former Spanish foreign minister, in Foreign Affairs in May. “The era of the post–World War II Euro-American alliance is over. . . . The Trump administration’s antagonism toward the traditional transatlantic alliance could be the most consequential trigger of further European integration since the groundwork for the EU was laid in 1948.”

TRUMP’S THERMIDOR?

Not everyone shared her confidence or her sense of urgency. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior were so strange, costly, and seemingly unsustainable that policymakers in other countries were divided over how seriously to take them. The national security and defense policies of NATO members, for example, are so intricately intertwined that a true transatlantic divorce would be expensive and traumatic for everyone involved. If the Europeans were to judge the United States to be fundamentally unreliable, they would eventually move to build their own weapons and beef up their own nuclear deterrent, reducing U.S. arms sales and influence; to develop duplicate systems in intelligence and power projection, gaining the capacity for strategic autonomy; and to restructure their supply lines to “de-risk” relations with the United States, the way American officials are badgering them to de-risk their growing relations with China. But all that would clearly harm the United States more than help it, so European leaders could not understand why Trump was pushing forward. Was he kidding? Was he bluffing? Was he stupid? Was he crazy? Analyzing the president’s motivations became the continent’s favorite parlor game, because the appropriate response to him would depend on which interpretation one favored.

As the spring wore on, the picture became a bit clearer, with the new administration’s preferences revealed by its behavior. Trump showed no concern for norms, principles, traditions, or other countries’ interests, and he seemed to have no long-term strategy. There was only his improvised quest for self-aggrandizement and easy short-term gains. The president’s default opening move was bullying designed to demonstrate dominance. When that worked, he kept going; when it met strong, sustained, tactful resistance, he gave up and moved on to other, softer targets.

At the beginning of April, for example, Trump announced massive tariffs on most of the globe. But within a week, facing chaotic markets and a falling dollar, he postponed most of them while doubling down on China. A month later, he largely backed off on the Chinese front, too. In late May, the White House announced a new set of 50 percent tariffs on Europe, but it paused them just two days later. And when the calls for annexing Canada, Greenland, and Panama produced strong resistance and victories for anti-Trump parties, those issues were shoved to the back burner, as were U.S. plans to take over Gaza, expelling the Palestinians and building a beach resort there. (Asked about the pattern, a clearly annoyed Trump said that’s what negotiations looked like.)

U.S. allies are suddenly realizing that the world is more realist than they had assumed.

Because of these trends, even as European governments took initial steps toward remilitarization and self-help, they watched closely to see whether Trump’s threats to abandon Ukraine and Europe more generally would be forgotten, too. Lowering their expectations for future U.S. support, they sought assurances of at least a “backstop” commitment by Washington not to walk away and leave the continent at Moscow’s mercy. With that, European policymakers reasoned, maybe the transatlantic marriage could be saved and a costly strategic divorce avoided. And by June, there were indeed signs of a possible shift.

Months of embracing Russia and coercing Ukraine did nothing to produce a settlement in their war because it did not address Russia’s fundamental goal of returning Kyiv to vassalage. Ukraine’s stubborn resistance kept it in the game and showed that it had more cards to play than the White House had expected. So the fighting ground on, and a frustrated Trump eventually signaled that he was losing interest in it. On European security more generally, meanwhile, the administration toned down its rhetoric somewhat, reiterated its commitment to extended deterrence, pushed for expanded European purchases of U.S. weaponry, and participated in stepped-up NATO operations in the Arctic—suggesting Washington was more interested in burden shifting than abandonment.

Squinting, one could see the outlines of a possible resolution to the crisis that could be reached over the summer. The United States would continue to provide NATO with nuclear guarantees, intelligence, enabling capabilities, materiel, some forces, and a supreme commander. Other members of NATO would contribute more money, weapons, and manpower. Ukraine would be kept going through its own and others’ efforts, including other countries paying Washington to send U.S. weapons to Kyiv. Perhaps Europe would tap the 200 billion euros (roughly $230 billion) in frozen Russian assets under its control to fund Ukraine’s defense.

If such a future does materialize, Trump’s bullying will have gotten Europe to do what previous U.S. administrations pleaded with it to do for decades: develop enough effective military capacity to take on more responsibility for European regional security. Many would consider this a tolerable scenario; some, an attractive one. Both the transatlantic alliance and a Western-oriented Ukraine would survive, and life would go on in reasonably familiar ways.

But significantly worse outcomes are still possible because the president is nothing if not volatile, and some factions in the administration are actively hostile to both NATO and Europe. And the Trump administration’s deeds have already destroyed so much trust that the relationship among NATO members will never be quite the same. Europe, having realized its vulnerabilities to the aggressive great powers to both its east and west, now understands that it is fighting a two-front war. And it is starting to get ready.

THE OTHER ZEITENWENDE

European policymakers failed to take the threat of American abandonment seriously in the past. They are determined not to make the same mistake again. Even as they try to muddle through the current crisis, therefore, they are taking small steps to hedge—steps that could lead to large consequences down the road.

One example is the creation, last fall, of a European commissioner for defense and space. The European Union has always been a peaceful project, with security matters left to individual countries and to NATO. But although the European Commission does not have its own army or weapons, it can nevertheless shape how its members organize their defense, and it is now starting to do so. The new commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, is arguing for the use of “buy local” requirements and different kinds of investment guarantees, to create financial incentives for European governments to purchase European-made materiel; nudging them to help firms set up flexible intra-European supply chains for equipment, such as drones or munitions; and organizing joint procurement packages that lower costs and increase interoperability. Such measures may not sound like much, but over time they could become the building blocks of a serious European defense industrial base that depends much less on the United States.

One of the crucial services that the United States provides for its allies, meanwhile, is access to the world’s best intelligence network. But the second Trump administration has raised doubts about whether that will continue—and Europeans are responding by expanding their own independent intelligence cooperation. Their track record of success in this regard is well established. The Schengen area, which allows for free movement among many European countries, works only because participating governments have negotiated complex arrangements to share information and coordinate policing activity. The same can apply to security-related intelligence—and eight member states have already formed a group doing just that. Such efforts will likely spread and expand, as will independent intelligence technology linkages among U.S. allies, such as Canada’s recent $4 billion purchase of Australian long-range, over-the-horizon military radar systems.

Finance and payment systems also bear watching. The transatlantic economy is the most integrated in the world, thanks less to trade in goods and services than to cross-border banking and investment. Financial integration has always and intentionally run alongside security cooperation, and U.S. policymakers have often exploited that connection to prod European politicians into accepting American strategic leadership. But Trump has been particularly heavy-handed; for example, in pressuring Europe to reimpose sanctions on Iran during his first term. And Europeans are responding by looking for ways to insulate themselves from American leverage—for example, by changing the way they shore up European banks, with stronger regulations, improved deposit insurance, and streamlined mechanisms for cross-border and retail payments. (Much of the financial plumbing required already exists for those countries that use the euro as a common currency.)

The small decisions European countries are making today on military procurement, intelligence sharing, finance, trade, and other issues could set the continent on a path toward independent great-power capabilities down the road. Such a Europe would no longer be compelled to follow the United States and might even emerge as a center of gravity, attracting other countries that are fed up with Washington’s bullying. The more capacity and independence such a group develops, the more it would follow its own counsel.

THE ROAD AHEAD

The international system right now looks like a strange theoretical sandwich. Its base is a classic realist group of sovereign nations with different capabilities and interests, all jockeying for position and survival. Layered on that is the postwar liberal order, a grand web of advanced industrial democracies and their partners, voluntarily cooperating for mutual long-term benefit, overseen and protected by a United States that is still, for the most part, looking out for the team at large. And now at the top of the system is Trump, constituting another realist layer—a team captain happy to play for himself alone.

For the moment, this structure is constraining everybody in NATO. U.S. allies are suddenly realizing that the world is more realist than they had assumed and that contracting out security to Washington has left them vulnerable and marginalized. Trump is finding that deeply rooted institutions and procedures of international cooperation are harder to discard or bypass than he thought and that going it alone can involve costs as well as benefits. It remains unclear how sustainable this situation is, or whether it will eventually move decisively one way or another.

What happens at the upcoming NATO summit and after will cap a season—or cap an era.

Unless Trump returns to a more conventional American foreign policy, the gulf between Washington and its allies will continue to grow even as attacks on the liberal order multiply. In the best-case scenario, Europeans will pull themselves together over time into an effective geopolitical and geoeconomic force that is assertive, self-confident, and capable. They would make good use of the assets available within the European Union and their connections with allies such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. European policymakers are now laying the foundations of this future. In it, the United States would shoulder fewer burdens but also exercise less influence.

If Trump continues on his current track and European countries fail to coalesce, the alliance’s toxic codependence will only get worse. Token or divided European rearmament efforts would not provide for continent-wide security needs or deter future Russian aggression. Financial and economic interdependence would still tie the United States to European security, but Washington would be increasingly unwilling to pay for it. China’s attempts to take advantage of this dispute by deepening its presence in Europe would be a constant source of tension. Power vacuums would emerge in the Middle East and Africa.

NATO summits have rarely been considered exciting critical junctures when history could be seen going down one path rather than another. This year is different. What happens at the alliance’s June meeting and after will cap a season—or cap an era.

GIDEON ROSE is an Axel Springer Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

ERIK JONES is Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and a Nonresident Scholar at Carnegie Europe.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Gideon Rose · June 23, 2025

18. Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D.

Along with VOA these are the two biggest strategic errors of the Trump administration.

However, if Secretary Rubio can build them back better then in the long run perhaps it will turn out for the better.

Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D.

The rapid dismantling of the global aid agency remains one of the most consequential outcomes of President Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government, showing his willingness to tear down institutions in defiance of the courts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-cuts-doge.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RE8._C_I.tkzR-Au_pEeb&smid=url-share

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By Christopher Flavelle Nicholas Nehamas and Julie Tate

Reporting from Washington

June 22, 2025

It was the day of President Trump’s inauguration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s new director looked like he might pass out, as the color drained from his face.

Jason Gray, U.S.A.I.D.’s chief information officer, who had been at the agency for only two years, had just learned he would be in charge, effective immediately. Mr. Gray wasn’t supposed to be the boss. The outgoing Biden administration had selected somebody with more foreign aid experience to manage U.S.A.I.D. until the new president chose, and Congress approved, a permanent administrator. But Mr. Trump’s team, apparently eager to reverse any decisions by the former president, told Mr. Gray to take the helm instead.

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Christopher Flavelle spent three months reporting on what led to the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. Here, he details his main takeaways.

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Inside the agency’s offices, Mr. Gray’s colleagues gathered around, trying to buck him up.

Yes, the job would be challenging under Mr. Trump, whose “America First” politics weren’t exactly sympathetic to sending U.S. taxpayer money around the world. But U.S.A.I.D. had come through the first Trump administration largely unscathed, and Marco Rubio, the incoming secretary of state, was a longtime supporter.

A little after 4 p.m., Mr. Gray issued an upbeat memo to the agency’s more than 10,000 employees, telling them to expect a focus on innovation and new partnerships.

“The next four years offer a great opportunity for our agency,” he wrote.

Two weeks later, U.S.A.I.D. was on the cusp of oblivion — its programs around the world stopped, its staff in Washington told to stay home.

Today, the rapid-fire dismantling of the country’s sprawling global aid agency remains one of the most consequential outcomes of the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the federal government. Not only did it transform U.S. foreign policy, but it also provided a vivid opening display of Mr. Trump’s willingness to tear down institutions as he saw fit, in defiance of Congress and the courts, with a speed that was hard for his opponents to comprehend, much less resist.

This is the story of those two weeks.

A New York Times examination found that Trump administration officials came to U.S.A.I.D. with no plan to dismantle the agency, at least not so quickly. Instead, that decision emerged day by day, marked by rash demands, shock and confusion. It culminated with a tense showdown 10 days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, in which agency employees defied orders from Elon Musk, who was then at the height of his influence in Washington, and personally intervened to drive the agency’s elimination.

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Mr. Musk demanded that Mr. Gray shut off email and cellphone access for U.S.A.I.D. workers around the world, including in conflict zones. Mr. Gray refused, saying that doing so would put their lives at risk, according to people familiar with the exchange. By the next day, he had been removed from his post.

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Jason Gray suddenly found himself at the helm of an agency the Trump administration was eager to slash, then eliminate.Credit...U.S.A.I.D.

This account, the most definitive to date of the sprawling agency’s rapid demise, is based on interviews with more than 50 current and former U.S.A.I.D. and State Department officials, and a review of internal emails and other documents. Most of those interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

The Times investigation found that Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency first approached U.S.A.I.D. as a source of useful anecdotes of what it called “viral waste” — government spending that seemed foolish, and could be exploited to support the case for cuts.

When employees raised concerns about demands that they viewed as dangerous or unlawful, the administration branded their actions as “insubordination” — then used that charge to justify dismantling the agency.

The result was a real-time decision to take down an institution created almost 65 years ago as a linchpin of U.S. foreign policy, intended to advance the country’s national security interests by establishing new markets for American goods, reducing conflicts that risked entangling U.S. troops, and countering efforts by communist and autocratic regimes to expand their power.

What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?The few hundred programs that survived DOGE’s purge reveal the future of foreign aid.

Few Republicans had been as vocal in their support for U.S.A.I.D. as Mr. Rubio, who, as a senator, once said that “in every region of the world, we should always search for ways to use U.S.A.I.D. and humanitarian assistance to strengthen our influence.” But as the agency collapsed, its remnants placed under his control as secretary of state, Mr. Rubio was largely a bystander while Mr. Musk and others shaped decisions on foreign aid.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The State Department did not address detailed questions outlining the findings of The Times’s investigation. In a statement, Jeremy Lewin, the department’s director of foreign assistance, said Mr. Rubio has “refocused foreign assistance to be more efficient, strategic and calibrated to advance American interests.”

“Folding U.S.A.I.D. under State has been an idea many have talked about for decades,” Mr. Lewin said. “President Trump and Secretary Rubio have actually gotten it done.”

Shuttering U.S.A.I.D. so quickly “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways,” a federal judge ruled less than two months into the new administration. (That ruling is on hold while an appeals court completes a review.)

By that point, it didn’t matter. The agency was effectively gone.

Immediate Confusion

The decision to end U.S.A.I.D. brought deadly consequences. But the events leading to that moment can be traced in part to a particularly banal cause: a confusingly worded directive from Mr. Trump.

On the day he was sworn in — Monday, Jan. 20 — Mr. Trump signed 26 executive orders, far more than his predecessors. Among them was Executive Order 14169, directing officials to “immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds” for a 90-day review.

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President Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day mandating a pause on development spending. Senior officials at U.S.A.I.D. were unsure what it meant.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Even the agency’s supporters acknowledged it could use reform. Much of the more than $35 billion it managed last year went to Washington-based contractors, not directly to communities in need overseas. The success of its programs, especially those focused on economic and political development, was often hard to measure. And U.S.A.I.D.’s goals sometimes clashed with those of the State Department.

U.S.A.I.D. had its share of fraud, waste and abuse, according to Paul Martin, whose job as inspector general at U.S.A.I.D. gave him responsibility for investigating such cases.

But Mr. Martin, who like other inspectors general was fired by the Trump administration, said he had found no evidence that U.S.A.I.D. was subject to more fraud, waste or abuse than other agencies.

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Whether U.S.A.I.D. was wasteful often depended on how the term was defined. Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., U.S.A.I.D. emphasized priorities that many Republicans disagreed with, including promoting gay and transgender rights.

But Mr. Trump’s executive order created a more immediate problem: U.S.A.I.D.’s leadership, including the president’s own appointees, wasn’t sure what his directive meant.

The document blocked U.S.A.I.D. from signing contracts for new projects. But, staff members wondered, did it also stop U.S.A.I.D. from making payments for contracts that were already agreed to? And did the directive block payments for work that had already been performed? Such a step, some worried, might be illegal.

The following evening — Tuesday, Jan. 21 — Mr. Gray seemed to acknowledge the confusion. In a memo about the president’s instructions, Mr. Gray said that the order’s effect on payments “will be subject to further guidance.”

That guidance arrived two days later, but not in a way that Mr. Gray could have expected.

The Return of Pete Marocco

On the Trump administration’s third full day — Thursday, Jan. 23 — a U.S.A.I.D. official got a late-night call that marked the first sign of trouble for the agency.

On the phone was Pete Marocco, the State Department’s newly appointed director of foreign assistance, giving him a degree of authority over U.S.A.I.D. Mr. Marocco said he had reason to believe employees were trying to subvert the president’s executive order, according to people with direct knowledge of the call. He was upset.

Mr. Marocco’s forceful approach was no surprise. In 2020, near the end of the first Trump administration, Mr. Marocco had been appointed to run a division inside U.S.A.I.D., the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization, where he tried to stop spending that he believed failed to support the president’s agenda.

A former Marine Corps platoon sergeant and an Oxford University graduate, Mr. Marocco followed a particular pattern at U.S.A.I.D. in the first Trump administration, according to people familiar with his time there. He would try to cancel contracts or freeze payments, then accuse U.S.A.I.D. employees of insubordination when they would complain.

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Pete Marocco was appointed to work at U.S.A.I.D. during the first Trump administration, where he built his reputation inside the agency.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

The political appointees above Mr. Marocco in 2020 soon encouraged him to take personal leave. They were frustrated that Mr. Marocco wouldn’t follow their guidance on how to run the bureau, according to people familiar with those events. U.S.A.I.D. employees viewed the episode as a public rebuke.

Now, back in power in a second Trump administration, Mr. Marocco was demanding that the employees he saw as subverting the president’s directives be identified, then pushed out.

The next morning — Friday, Jan. 24 — senior staff members met in the Ronald Reagan Building, U.S.A.I.D.’s glass and limestone headquarters three blocks from the White House, to decide how to respond to Mr. Marocco’s accusations.

Staff members said Mr. Marocco’s concerns appeared to reflect a misunderstanding of U.S.A.I.D.’s convoluted payment systems, according to people familiar with what happened during the meeting.

Even if the president’s order prohibited the flow of funding for existing contracts — and U.S.A.I.D.’s leaders believed it did not — there was still the question of timing. Employees explained that the agency’s payments moved slowly: After U.S.A.I.D. signed off on a payment, that money was transferred to other agencies, such as the Treasury Department, where it often sat for days or weeks before leaving the federal government.

In other words, the payments in question had likely been approved by U.S.A.I.D. before Mr. Trump’s directive. The administration appointees at the meeting seemed satisfied. Once that system could be explained to Mr. Marocco, the thinking went, he would realize his concerns were unfounded.

The meeting ended with U.S.A.I.D.’s leaders believing the problem was resolved. Instead, it was about to get worse.

Shock Waves to Global Aid

A few hours later, on Friday afternoon, the State Department issued a memo written by Mr. Marocco and signed by Mr. Rubio, putting a halt to all foreign assistance payments from the agency.

But that new directive also went a step further. It told U.S.A.I.D. to issue “stop-work orders” on its more than 6,200 grants and contracts.

Mr. Rubio’s instructions reverberated around the world.

U.S.A.I.D.’s programs included preventing and treating diseases like H.I.V. and malaria; providing emergency food assistance; supporting emerging democracies by funding election monitors and civil rights groups; and helping communities cope with climate shocks like storms or drought.

Sometimes the agency’s programs had even simpler goals, like reuniting families.

Gabriel Walder, the head of a faith-based nonprofit called Alliance for Children Everywhere, was in London, meeting with prospective funders, when he got an email telling him to halt projects, including one helping destitute families in Africa whose children had been placed in orphanages. The group provided parents with the resources to feed and care for their children at home.

The group had signed a contract to reunite families in Malawi, with a focus on children who were younger than 5 — those at the greatest risk living in institutions. It had already identified the families whose children would be returned; after U.S.A.I.D.’s stop-work order, the families had to be told their children would not be coming home after all.

Sophia, a mother of six in Malawi, was separated from her year-old son, who had been placed in an orphanage because she couldn't afford to care for him. An American faith-based group, Alliance for Children Everywhere, was preparing to reunite Sophia with her child and support his care. Then U.S.A.I.D. cut off funding.Credit...Brian Otieno for The New York Times

On Saturday, Jan. 25, Dayne Curry, who was then the Afghanistan country director for Mercy Corps, a large nonprofit, awoke to an email carrying the same message to stop all programs.

The agency added that exceptions were available for “lifesaving” programs. But what counted as lifesaving? It was hard to know, because U.S.A.I.D.’s political appointees had also restricted employees from communicating with anyone outside the agency, including Congress, the State Department or even the aid groups affected by the freeze.

A U.S.A.I.D. employee who worked on projects in Afghanistan, and who held weekly meetings with aid groups, recalled suddenly being prohibited from attending those meetings, or canceling them. So when aid workers in Afghanistan signed into Google Meet for their weekly checkup, the space on the screen usually occupied by U.S.A.I.D. staff was blank.

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U.S.A.I.D. had been trying to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan since 2021, when the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces left the country without a functioning government.

“It felt like a betrayal,” the employee said of the stop-work order. “We owed people in Afghanistan just a little bit of something, and then we failed again.”

Enter DOGE

Back in Washington, U.S.A.I.D.’s problems were compounding.

One week into the Trump administration — Monday, Jan. 27 — Mr. Marocco arrived at the Reagan building. He said he still believed U.S.A.I.D. employees had deliberately violated the president’s order, and said he was expanding his investigation.

To do that, Mr. Marocco was accompanied by members of the Department of Government Efficiency — the effort set up by Mr. Musk, who had promised to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, though he would ultimately fall far short of that goal. U.S.A.I.D. was one of the first agencies visited by DOGE.

But the people who arrived at U.S.A.I.D. were neither experts in foreign assistance contracts nor trained auditors. Luke Farritor was a 23-year-old computer programmer who had dropped out of college. Edward Coristine was a 19-year-old high school graduate who goes by “Big Balls.” Clayton Cromer was a lawyer and former executive assistant to Ed Martin, Mr. Trump’s then-acting U.S. attorney in Washington, who had sought to investigate the president’s perceived enemies.

Key Players

Pete Marocco

Trump appointee at the State Department who oversaw the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D.

Jason Gray

Acting U.S.A.I.D. administrator for the first two weeks of the Trump administration.

Marco Rubio

Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, and one-time U.S.A.I.D. advocate. Replaced Mr. Gray as acting administrator.

Clayton Cromer

Member of the DOGE team at U.S.A.I.D.

Elon Musk

Head of DOGE. Personally intervened on multiple occasions to tell U.S.A.I.D. employees what to do.

Luke Farritor

Member of the DOGE team at U.S.A.I.D., a 23-year-old computer scientist.

Jeremy Lewin

First came to U.S.A.I.D. as a DOGE member. Later replaced Mr. Marocco as director of foreign assistance.

The political appointees brought in to run U.S.A.I.D., by contrast, tended to have more and broader experience. They included an oil and gas executive, a naval intelligence officer, a former Heritage Foundation fellow, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a reporter for a right-wing media outlet and the manager of a Christian elementary school. Several had served in the first Trump administration.

But despite their relative lack of experience, the DOGE members moved quickly to force changes.

After a few hours interviewing agency officials, DOGE staff presented Mr. Gray with a list of 57 U.S.A.I.D. employees they said were involved in the payments Mr. Marocco had complained about, according to people familiar with the events of that day. DOGE demanded those employees be put on administrative leave — removed from the building, cut off from their computer systems, email accounts and work phones.

The list made little sense, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting: It included most of the senior career officials across the agency. Even if the payments had somehow violated the president’s order, most of the people DOGE had identified would have had nothing to do with them.

DOGE insisted, promising to compile the evidence and present it to U.S.A.I.D.’s leaders a few days later. Mr. Gray relented.

The 57 employees were put on leave that afternoon. Mr. Gray later issued a memo to the entire agency, saying the employees seemed to have taken steps to “circumvent the president’s executive orders,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Times.

‘Viral Waste’

There soon turned out to be another reason DOGE had come to U.S.A.I.D. It was looking for something — and not just savings. Its goal was finding “viral waste,” as one person familiar with the strategy put it, meaning examples of government spending that could be easily mocked.

On Tuesday, Jan. 28, Karoline Leavitt took the podium at the White House for her first media briefing as Mr. Trump’s press secretary. Ms. Leavitt listed examples of spending that the administration had frozen. One stood out.

“There was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” Ms. Leavitt said. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”

After Ms. Leavitt’s briefing, U.S.A.I.D. staff went to Laken Rapier, the agency’s political appointee for public affairs, and told her that the money in question wasn’t for condoms, but for family planning more broadly, such as birth-control pills, according to people familiar with the exchange.

More important, the Gaza in question was Gaza province, a part of Mozambique, in southern Africa — almost 4,000 miles away from the Gaza Strip. They urged Ms. Rapier to alert the White House, so it could at least avoid repeating the statement.

Image

“There was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, claimed on Jan. 28. U.S.A.I.D. staff warned internally that the statement was wrong.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The warnings from staff went unheeded. The following day, Mr. Trump expanded on the claim during a White House event. “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” he said, generating laughter. Mr. Trump added that Hamas used condoms “as a method of making bombs,” without explaining what that meant.

“These were the types of payments, and many others,” Mr. Trump said. “I could stand here all day and tell you the things that we found.”

Asked if Mr. Trump knew at the time that his statement about Gaza was false, a White House spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, did not address the question.

“Over decades of mismanagement, USAID strayed from its original mission and became a bloated, taxpayer-funded nonprofit,” Ms. Kelly said in a statement. “President Trump was elected by the American people to put America First.”

The Big Day

The next day — Thursday, Jan. 30 — marked a turning point. Instead of redirecting U.S.A.I.D., the Trump administration and DOGE began moving to shut it down.

That morning, DOGE members approached top U.S.A.I.D. officials, seeking to back up their assertion that some of the people sent home were involved in improper payments.

That evidence turned out to be thin: It revolved around an email that Luke Farritor sent to his teammates in which he shared the results of his review of U.S.A.I.D. payments since the executive order was signed.

“I could be wrong,” Mr. Farritor wrote in the message, which was reviewed by The Times. “My numbers could be off.”

The members of DOGE also said they would not allow the senior employees who had been put on leave to come back, regardless of the evidence, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Times. They demanded that some of those people be fired.

Senior career staff members pushed back. Nick Gottlieb, U.S.A.I.D.’s director of employee and labor relations and the person who had put the 57 people on leave three days before, told Mr. Gray in the memo that he believed keeping the people on leave was unjustified, and that DOGE’s orders to fire some of them were unlawful.

“There is no evidence any of them attempted to circumvent the president’s orders,” Mr. Gottlieb wrote. He added that he would report DOGE’s actions to the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that protects federal employees, including whistle-blowers.

Mr. Gottlieb sent those employees a follow-up email on Thursday afternoon, saying he had no grounds for keeping them on leave.

It was, in the eyes of DOGE and the White House, the ultimate act of resistance — a clear-cut case of insubordination by a career official.

And it was, by many accounts, the moment that sealed U.S.A.I.D.’s fate.

Mr. Cromer, one of the DOGE members, immediately began running around looking for Mr. Gottlieb’s office, according to one person with direct knowledge of the events. Moments later, Mr. Cromer knocked on Mr. Gottlieb’s door, accompanied by a group of people, including other DOGE staff members — and security personnel, who walked Mr. Gottlieb out of the building.

That evening, members of DOGE — including Mr. Lewin, who was then part of the DOGE operation — accused Mr. Gray of losing control of the agency, according to three people familiar with the conversations that followed Mr. Gottlieb’s actions.

DOGE made a striking demand, ordering Mr. Gray to consent to locking every U.S.A.I.D. employee worldwide out of the agency’s systems, including phones and emails. Mr. Marocco, who joined some of those conversations by phone, echoed that demand, the people said.

Mr. Gray refused. Mr. Lewin then called Mr. Musk, and handed the phone to Mr. Gray. Mr. Musk repeated the demand, according to the people familiar with what happened.

Again, Mr. Gray refused. He said that U.S.A.I.D. staff members were in the midst of being evacuated from the Democratic Republic of Congo because of civil unrest. They were fighting Ebola in Uganda. They were helping move food into Gaza.

Suddenly cutting off access to U.S.A.I.D. systems could get people killed, Mr. Gray said.

U.S.A.I.D. canceled a project with Mercy Corps to provide clean water in Afghan villages. Rahmatullah, a local farmer, said the 400 families in his village don’t have the money to dig a new well. “Your country is rich,” he said. “I am asking you to have mercy.”Credit...Joao Silva/The New York Times

By the next day, the White House had removed Mr. Gray from his position as acting U.S.A.I.D. administrator.

Mr. Rubio became the new administrator, in addition to his responsibilities as secretary of state. He named Mr. Marocco the acting deputy administrator. Now Mr. Marocco had the reins — and freedom to impose what many saw as revenge for having been pushed out of the agency five years earlier.

‘Rank Insubordination’

That same night, a parallel struggle was underway for control of U.S.A.I.D.’s computer systems and access to the agency’s headquarters.

Members of DOGE demanded that U.S.A.I.D.’s security team provide them with full control of the agency’s networks, including the power to lock anyone out of the system.

Employees at first declined to give that kind of access to DOGE, most of whom lacked security clearances, according to people familiar with what happened. Members of DOGE got Mr. Musk on the phone, who told U.S.A.I.D. employees to cooperate.

Image

Elon Musk had a direct hand in the takeover of U.S.A.I.D. by DOGE.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Days later, when Mr. Rubio was asked if U.S.A.I.D. had to be abolished, he responded: “Well, that was always the goal, was to reform it. But now we have rank insubordination.”

“Their basic attitude is: ‘We don’t work for anyone. We work for ourselves. No agency of government can tell us what to do,’” Mr. Rubio told a reporter for Fox News.

In the days that followed, DOGE began to tear the agency down.

On Saturday, Feb. 1, DOGE demanded that U.S.A.I.D. staff members provide total access to the website, which was then shut down. One U.S.A.I.D. employee described the move as wiping away the public face of the agency.

That day also brought fresh turmoil inside the building. Some DOGE members wanted to work in the administrator’s suite, according to people familiar with what happened. But their badges were not properly coded to open that door.

DOGE members believed the agency’s employees were deliberately keeping them out. The episode cemented DOGE’s view that U.S.A.I.D. employees could not be trusted.

On Sunday, Feb. 2, thousands of U.S.A.I.D. staff members lost access to their email accounts and computer systems, according to a lawsuit filed by employees. At 12:20 p.m. that afternoon, Mr. Musk wrote on X: “U.S.A.I.D. is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

That evening, Mr. Trump weighed in publicly on U.S.A.I.D. “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out,” he told reporters a little after 7 p.m. “And then we’ll make a decision.”

Within a few hours, that decision was announced — not by the president or his secretary of state, but by Mr. Musk.

The Wood Chipper

That night around midnight, Mr. Musk said on X that he had obtained Mr. Trump’s approval to shut down the agency.

“As we dug into U.S.A.I.D.,” Mr. Musk said, “it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms.”

Around 12:45 a.m. that morning — Monday, Feb. 3 — a DOGE member emailed U.S.A.I.D. employees, telling them not to come into the office that day. At 1:54 a.m., Mr. Musk posted his now-infamous message on X: “We spent the weekend feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

At the agency’s Washington offices that morning, staff members who got in fielded requests from colleagues to collect their personal items. One person recounted going desk to desk with a tote bag, gathering up family photos to return to their owners.

Image

Supporters of U.S.A.I.D. demonstrating outside the agency’s headquarters in Washington on Feb. 3, as employees were locked out of their offices.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

Not far away, at the State Department, Mr. Marocco told a meeting of senior diplomats and other officials that U.S.A.I.D. was getting shut down. “We’re going to be doing this,” Mr. Marocco said, according to a person who was in the meeting. Career officials in the room were too shocked to respond.

(Mr. Marocco would abruptly leave his role as director of foreign assistance at the State Department two months later, replaced by Mr. Lewin.)

Two thousand miles from Washington, Mr. Rubio walked onto the patio behind the American ambassador’s residence in El Salvador. Mr. Rubio had come to the country to meet with its president, Nayib Bukele; now he was scheduled to address embassy employees, many of whom worked for U.S.A.I.D.

That Mr. Rubio was in El Salvador on the day of U.S.A.I.D.’s demise carried a particular resonance. The agency spent more than $50 million on human rights and other pro-democracy programs in El Salvador last year, according to federal data. Now, Mr. Rubio was meeting with Mr. Bukele, who has called himself the world’s “coolest dictator,” to discuss sending undocumented migrants from the United States to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

One of the groups that U.S.A.I.D. funded in El Salvador, Cristosal, is a human rights group that investigates corruption by the country’s government.

When Cristosal’s director, Noah Bullock, heard Mr. Rubio would visit the country, he asked the embassy if the secretary would make time to meet with representatives from civil society groups like his, as had often been the case for such visits around the world. The embassy never responded. Cristosal’s U.S.A.I.D. funding has since been canceled; the head of its anticorruption unit, Ruth López, was arrested last month, and is still in prison.

The day before Mr. Rubio’s visit, as U.S.A.I.D. was being dismantled, Mr. Bukele posted on X that 90 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s funding “is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.”

Image

Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador at his residence on Feb. 3.Credit...Pool photo by Mark Schiefelbein

One of the U.S.A.I.D. employees at the ambassador’s residence asked Mr. Rubio what would happen to the agency’s programs in El Salvador, according to two people in attendance. The employee cited some of those programs and their importance to the United States — including work aimed at helping migrants find jobs in Central America, so that fewer people would journey north to the American border.

Mr. Rubio did not repeat Mr. Musk’s message from earlier in the day that U.S.A.I.D. was being torn apart, according to the people in attendance. And he said that U.S. foreign assistance programs would largely continue.

The same day, the State Department sent Congress a letter with Mr. Rubio’s signature, which seemed to better capture the scale of change underway.

“U.S.A.I.D. may move, reorganize, and integrate certain missions, bureaus, and offices into the Department of State,” the letter read. “The remainder of the agency may be abolished.”

A few days later, workers removed the agency’s name from above the entrance to the Ronald Reagan Building.

Mr. Trump seemed delighted. He posted on social media: “CLOSE IT DOWN!”

Image

By the end of the week, all employees around the world would be put on administrative leave, and the agency’s name would be removed from above the entrance to the Ronald Reagan Building.Credit...Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Reporting was contributed by Michael Crowley, Zach Montague, Stephanie Nolen, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Mattathias Schwartz, Jonathan Swan, Edward Wong and Ryan Mac. Sheelagh McNeill and Emily Powell contributed research.

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter covering how President Trump is transforming the federal government.

Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: 14 Stormy Days That Wiped Out An Aid Agency. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: U.S. Politics, Agency for International Development, Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump

19. the butterfly effect and humility – unpredictability and linkages by Dr. Cynthia Watson

Excertps:

So, what’s the point in reading any analysis? It comes down to risk tolerance, of course, but I want to consider cause and effect today.

Many people are producing analyses of varying quality on Saturday’s events in Iran. I recommend, among many, Mick Ryan’s take on Sunday morning, where he reminded us that President Trump may see our country as done with Iran, but Tehran may well see things otherwise; I can’t believe they won’t, but that rests on historical study. What I acknowledge is we can’t know precisely the effect of this weekend’s events, regardless of how we try or assert that we are sure one way or the other.

I acknowledge that I am pretty worried about dangers (confirming yet I am yet another analyst plagued by pessimism as a bias I try but infrequently conquer) but humbly state I lack certainty about the future. I admit analysts can explain history pretty well but have a disastrous record (me included) at predicting immediate successes or failures. Additionally, things often unfold in stages, only to complicate matters further.

Actions create consequences

Upgrade to founding

the butterfly effect and humility

unpredictability and linkages

https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-effect-and-humility?utm

Cynthia Watson

Jun 23, 2025

A faithful reader and dear friend pointed out yesterday that outside the national security analysis eco-system (or the Beltway, he could have added), Johanna and John Q. Publique are thrilled we finally kicked ass with the bad guys over the weekend. I instinctively wonder whether it can be that simple.

As we begin the week, I return to the focus of this column: actions create consequences. The next time someone says they or some event doesn’t have adverse effects, can you be so confident?

I must also humbly submit that some of us overstate those adverse effects because the complexity of human behavior is not linear or entirely predictable.

So, what’s the point in reading any analysis? It comes down to risk tolerance, of course, but I want to consider cause and effect today.

Many people are producing analyses of varying quality on Saturday’s events in Iran. I recommend, among many, Mick Ryan’s take on Sunday morning, where he reminded us that President Trump may see our country as done with Iran, but Tehran may well see things otherwise; I can’t believe they won’t, but that rests on historical study. What I acknowledge is we can’t know precisely the effect of this weekend’s events, regardless of how we try or assert that we are sure one way or the other.

I acknowledge that I am pretty worried about dangers (confirming yet I am yet another analyst plagued by pessimism as a bias I try but infrequently conquer) but humbly state I lack certainty about the future. I admit analysts can explain history pretty well but have a disastrous record (me included) at predicting immediate successes or failures. Additionally, things often unfold in stages, only to complicate matters further.

The world is dynamic rather than static. One of the great explanatory ideas of the 1990s was the “butterfly effect,” a concept within chaos theory. If you have forgotten, the effect hypothesized that a seemingly insignificant event could create consequences long after the insect’s wings moved in, say, in the Republic of Congo. Born of meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz’s study of the massive interplay of dynamics in the atmosphere, the concept, based on analyzing vast amounts of data, reminds us that there are so many variables in a particular setting that we can’t track all of them adequately to know why, what, when, or how. This concept may apply to any initial action, given that the world is so intertwined, despite our preference as Americans for individualism and single-cause solutions.

Lorenz’s 1963 paper, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow,” argues “that we can’t know” the effects for certain because of the unpredictability of a panoply of factors that make prediction impossible. Lorenz’s real message was about complexity resulting from interrelationships taken in their entirety, which in turn create more variables than we can grasp. After all, few things are as complex as human behavior—or meteorology in which he worked.

Many effects do not occur instantaneously in our lives, though a gunshot wound can kill immediately. Instead, many consequences are unpredictable and may not manifest for days, weeks, or even centuries. Or they may become mitigated by the effects of other seemingly less direct actions.

What we can recognize is that human actions result in unexpected effects that may cascade into larger events. I apply this by noting that explicit, desired outcomes may not be as straightforward as they appear at the time, whether failures or successes. Actions create consequences over a long time horizon, for good or ill.

But actions, whether butterfly wings flapping in the Congo or getting up to get more coffee, do have consequences. They just are harder to guarantee than many of us want to accept.

Thank you for your time reading Actions today or any other day. I welcome your thoughts, corrections, or rebuttals. I appreciate each of you as readers, particularly those who generously support this work as paid subscribers.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Nathan Chandler, “What is the Butterfly Effect and how do we misunderstand it?”, howscienceworks.com, 9 June 2023, retrieved at https://science.howstuffworks.com/math-concepts/butterfly-effect.htm

Mick Ryan, “America Bombs Iran”, FuturaDoctrina.substack.com, 21 June 2025.

Lilah Waldman, “The Butterfly Effect”, Bohr Franklin Science Journal, 9 May, retrieved at https://www.bohrfranklin.org/tem/butterfly-effect-lilah-waldman

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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