US-Israeli war on Iran, day 7: Moscow joins Tehran: Russia is giving Iran the locations of U.S. forces, including warships and aircraft, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing three anonymous officials. “The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.” 

Second opinion: “In Iran’s War, Russia Serves as Backstage Partner,” Nicole Grajewski wrote Thursday for Russia Matters. 

Update: Iran’s attacks have plummeted, but its targets are more spread out, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Since Saturday, Iran’s ballistic-missile launches are down 90% and drone attacks, 83%, defense officials said Thursday, thanks in part to the targeting of Iran’s underground missile cities. “But Iran still has other ways to retaliate, most important its arsenal of low-cost drones. It continues to launch drones by the hundreds at Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf, spreading fear, roiling markets and disrupting shipments of oil and goods from a region that is crucial to the world’s economy.” 

“Iran’s emphasis now is persistence, not volume,” said Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former foreign policy analyst for the crown prince of Bahrain. More, here.

Latest: Israeli strikes are pounding Lebanon, including an ongoing barrage around Beirut after the Israelis issued new evacuation orders for citizens living in and around Lebanon’s capital city. “At least three buildings collapsed, and thousands who live in the area have been displaced,” the New York Times reports as Israel targets Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in the region. 

View a regularly-updated interactive map of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran via the Institute for the Study of War, here. 

The death toll inside Iran has risen to over 1,300 people while more than 200 have been killed inside Lebanon, according to the Times and al-Jazeera. On Friday, Israel also issued a new evacuation order for Iranians living in the Qom region, which is located near an Iranian nuclear site.

The State Department suspended operations at its embassy in Kuwait City amid the widening regional war, officials announced Thursday. 

At least two of America’s Gulf allies complain the U.S. didn’t give them enough time to prepare for defense against Iranian drones and missiles, AP reported Friday. One expert said U.S. officials appear to have “underestimated the risk to its Gulf Arab allies, believing American troops and Israel would be the primary targets of Iranian retaliation.”

Related: “Operational secrecy kept the US from making evacuation plans—and that means Americans in the Mideast could wait days,” 35-year Foreign Service veteran Donald Heflin told The Conversation on Thursday. 

Duration alert: The U.S. military has asked for more Iran-focused intelligence support “for at least 100 days but likely through September,” Politico reported Wednesday. “It’s the first known call for additional intelligence personnel for the Iran war by the administration, and a sign the Pentagon is already allocating funding for operations that may stretch long beyond President Donald Trump’s initial four-week timeline for the conflict,” Nahal Toosi, Jack Detsch, and Paul McLeary wrote. 

But many Republicans are insistent that there is neither a war going on, nor that it will last long. “We’re not at war, we have no intention at being at war,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “The president and the Department of Defense have made it very clear, this is a limited operation.” 

Johnson spoke after House lawmakers failed to rein in Trump’s Iran war powers in a 212-219 vote in the lower chamber Thursday. The bill would have required the White House to suspend operations until it gained Congressional approval for the war. Four Democrats joined Republicans to oppose the effort—Reps. Jared Golden of Maine; Henry Cuellar of Texas; Ohio’s Greg Landsman; and Juan Vargas of California—while two Republicans joined the Democrats in support, including Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Ohio’s Warren Davidson. 

• “It’s not a war,” Florida GOP Rep. Randy Fine said Wednesday. 
• “I would call it an operation at this point,” California Rep. Ken Calvert said this week about 72 hours after the first bombs fell in Tehran. 
• “This is war, and we’re taking out the threat,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday. Moments later when asked about his use of the word, “war,” he replied, “That was a misspoke.” 
• “I have to go back and look at the war,” President Trump said Wednesday after a public event at the White House. 

Trump acknowledged, but shrugged off dangers to stateside Americans. Time magazine asked the president this week whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home from the Iran war. “I guess,” Trump replied. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things.” 

“Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die,” Trump said. 

On rising gas prices, “I don’t have any concern about it,” the president told Reuters Thursday. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over,” he said, “and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.”

Related reading: 

• “Kuwait Shuts Production, Qatar Warns Oil Could Hit $150 in Weeks,” Oilprice.com wrote Friday off developments initially reported hours earlier in the Wall Street Journal;
• And “Dow drops 800 after the US job market weakens and oil prices jump to the highest since 2024,” the Associated Press reported Friday as well. 

---

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1987, the Reagan administration was finalizing its decision to escort reflagged commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, an operation that would lead to a shadow war with Iran and a one-day battle the following April.

After a report surfaced Thursday that the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence to carry out attacks inside Iran, two additional outlets have taken a much closer look at an airstrike Saturday on an elementary school that killed more than 170 people, including children in southern Tehran. 

After visual analysis using satellite imagery, social media posts and verified videos, the New York Times reported Thursday that “official statements that U.S. forces were attacking naval targets near the Strait of Hormuz, where the I.R.G.C. base is located, suggest they were most likely to have carried out the strike.”

And according to Reuters, “U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible” for the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. However, officials “have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation,” the wire service notes. According to the Times, satellite imagery “shows that multiple precision strikes hit at least six Revolutionary Guards buildings along with the school. Four buildings inside the naval base were completely destroyed and two other buildings showed impact points at the center of their roofs, consistent with such precision hits.”

A former Air Force analyst said “the most likely explanation was that the school had been a ‘target misidentification’—that forces had attacked the site without realizing that it might have had large numbers of civilians inside.” Read more (gift link), here. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth batted away concerns about U.S. munitions stockpiles in a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon. Instead, he seemed to suggest that as Iran’s capabilities are weakened, the remaining missiles are stretching further, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports.

Notable: U.S. and partner forces have fired more than 800 Patriot missiles in the first three days of fighting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday—adding that the total is more than Ukraine has been given since it was invaded by Russia four years ago, the Kyiv Independent reported Thursday.

Little planning for drones: “Fears are already circulating at the Pentagon that the U.S. will soon burn through its arsenal of advanced air-defense systems, given the intensity of the air war in the Middle East,” The Atlantic’s Simon Shuster and Nancy Youssef wrote Thursday. “Whether those fears are realized could depend on how long the war lasts. But the U.S. failure to deploy cheap and effective weapons against Iranian drones already looks like poor planning at best, and hubris at worst.” Read on, here.

U.S. forces destroyed Iran’s military space command, Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, announced Thursday. But experts told Novelly that the country’s nascent space capabilities never posed a significant threat.

Decades-old B-1 and B-52 bombers have hit hundreds of Iranian military targets this week, defense officials said in another fact sheet from the ongoing war. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has a bit more on the recent history and anticipated future of those airframes, here.

Analysis: “The inaugural deployment of the LUCAS drone, a near-clone of the Iranian Shahed-136, signals a big Pentagon step into the era of affordable mass,” writes Anna Miskelley of Forecast International. “While the Iranian drone flies to pre-programmed GPS coordinates, LUCAS has a vision-based object recognition system that enables it to find and hit specific military hardware.” 

“And LUCAS’ combat debut may prove far more than a regional tactical experiment,” she warns. “If successful in the coming weeks, it could be a live-fire proof of concept for the Hellscape strategy being developed for the Pacific.” More, here. 

Proxy watch: Most Iran-backed militants inside Iraq are not interested in jumping into this fight, Reuters reported Friday. Much of this is because Iran’s proxy network has been “hollowed out by years of targeted assassinations of hard-to-replace leaders; the loss of secure bases for training and weapons transit; and the transformation of Iraqi commanders into wealthy politicians and businessmen with more to lose than gain from confronting the West.” 

On the other hand, the Kurdish people posted “a message to the American people” on Thursday. Their message comes amid reports the CIA is looking to arm Kurds to enter Iran to distract and help destabilize remaining regime forces. “Kurdish forces fought ISIS not only to defend our homeland, but also to protect the world from terrorism. We stood on the front lines against extremism because we believe in freedom, stability, and peaceful coexistence. However, we cannot ignore the painful moments of the past,” the Kurds wrote in their Thursday message. 

“During the last nine years, decisions made during the presidency of Donald Trump left the Kurds in difficult situations three times: in 2017 in Kirkuk, in 2019 in Rojava, and again in 2026 in Rojava. In those moments, Kurdish forces were left to face powerful enemies alone,” the message reads. “We still see the United States as an important partner and a friend of the Kurdish people,” but “At the same time, we have learned from the past,” they said. 

“The Kurds in Iran will not repeat the mistakes that happened in Iraq and Syria. Partnership must be built on clear understanding and real guarantees,” they said, which to our ears doesn’t necessarily sound like they’ve declined the offer to assist the U.S. in this conflict. Indeed, they conclude, “We believe in the same values of freedom, dignity, and the fight against extremism. Together, we can stand against terrorism and build a more stable and peaceful future.” Read the rest, here.  

Related reading:

• “Hegseth Finds His Footing as Epic Fury’s Front Man,” the Wall Street Journal reported Friday; 
• ‘“Largest US military hospital abroad halts labor, delivery services amid Iran war,” Military Times reported Thursday regarding the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany;
• “Berlin warns against losing sight of Ukraine’s needs amid Iran war,” Reuters reported Friday from Germany; 
• “Hegseth’s comments are a reminder that government isn’t always eager to show the human cost to war,” AP reported Friday; 
• “White House to China: Buy Less Oil from Russia, More from America,” the Journal reported Thursday; 
• And “China in talks with Iran to allow safe oil and gas passage through Hormuz, sources say,” Reuters reported Thursday. 

Around the Defense Department

Drones will present a “bigger” threat than IEDs did in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the head of Joint Interagency Task Force-401, told reporters on Thursday at an industry event hosted by the Army. “What I can tell you is that the challenge of unmanned systems, the threat posed from unmanned systems, is going to far exceed the threat that we saw from IEDs…where we made some progress, but never really got in front of it,” Ross said. 

The U.S. spent more than $20 billion defending against IEDs 20 years ago, and never came up with a good detection system for roadside bombs, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. But thanks to the efforts of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the U.S. managed to create a vehicle—MRAPs—that at least offered much better protection from them than the unarmored humvees that troops had been using in the first years of those wars.  

But unlike IEDs, “we’re going to see proliferation of unmanned systems into our commercial airspace,” Ross predicted. “It’s going to be very common in the next few years. And what that means is that our ability to manage that airspace safely—and then protect critical infrastructure that must be protected, whether it’s formations or locations—that market is just going to continue to grow over time.” More, here. 

SecDef Hegseth just appointed a 25-year-old to run the Pentagon’s AI efforts. His name is Gavin Kliger, and he was one of Elon Musk’s staffers charged with overhauling the federal government in last year’s much-promised, little-delivered DOGE effort. Kliger led the DOGE operation at the IRS last February. Twelve months later, he’s been nominated to be the U.S. military’s Chief Data Officer, according to a social media post Friday morning on Twitter. 

As CDO, Kliger will be “at the center of the Department’s most ambitious AI efforts,” the account for the Defense Department’s Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering said. “His background includes service on Secretary Hegseth’s [DOGE] team, where he oversaw the launch of GenAI.mil,” and an unspecified role in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program. “Kliger will be a key leader in executing the Department’s AI strategy,” with a “focus on the day-to-day alignment and execution of the Department’s AI projects, working directly with America’s frontier AI labs to support the warfighter,” officials said in the Friday post.

Related reading: 

• “Sam Altman Wants Elected Officials, Not OpenAI, to Decide How Military Uses AI,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday;

• “GOP’s Turner rips Pentagon No. 3 at hearing,” The Hill reported Thursday regarding policy chief Elbridge Colby’s input on allegedly stalled Pentagon support for Ukraine; 
• “Ukraine’s F-16 jets were starved of US-made missiles for weeks,” Reuters reported Thursday;
• “Air Force cybersecurity chief tapped to lead Pentagon’s information-security efforts,” Nextgov reported Thursday; 
• “US tells Latin America: Military force is the only way to defeat cartels,” the wire service reported Thursday as well; 
• “Venezuela and US to work together on mining developments, Rodríguez says,” the BBC reported Thursday; 
• And from the region, “Ecuadorean troops find 35m-long hidden ‘narco-sub’,” the BBC reported separately on Thursday. 

]]>

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ nascent space program has only a handful of satellites.

The defense secretary asserts that the U.S. has no shortage of munitions.

“We’re making sure that we get them everything they require to protect themselves,” Brig. Gen. Matt Ross said of troops currently in CENTCOM, as the Iran war continues.

US-Israeli war on Iran, day 6: The war’s death toll has risen to at least 1,230 Iranians after more 3,600 U.S. and Israeli military strikes across the country since Saturday. In response, officials in Tehran say they’ve targeted 27 military bases hosting U.S. troops throughout the region. Nearly all of those missile and drone attacks have been intercepted by American, Israeli or allied defense systems. 

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have targeted the United Arab Emirates more than any other country, accounting for 1,138 of Tehran’s 2,171 drone and missile attacks, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Iran has also targeted Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus and Azerbaijan in the latest of these developments on Thursday. 

Israel is also targeting alleged Iran-backed militants in Lebanon, killing at least 77 people and wounding more than 520 since Saturday, al-Jazeera reports.

Update: U.S. defense officials identified the fifth and sixth American soldiers killed in the Iran war over the weekend. 

• Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa; and
• Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, Calif.

Both were present at a makeshift facility in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, when it was attacked by an Iranian drone on Sunday. Like the four soldiers identified on Tuesday, they were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, based in Des Moines, Iowa. Officials noted Marzan “was at the scene of the incident…and is believed to be the individual who perished at the scene.” Relatedly, “Positive identification of Chief Warrant Officer 3 Marzan will be completed by the medical examiner,” the Defense Department said in a statement Wednesday evening. 

Global oil prices continue to rise on Thursday, with the New York Times reporting a 15% increase since the war started, and Reuters reporting “Around 300 oil tankers remained inside the Strait of ​Hormuz” while the conflict continues. 

Alert: Iranian drones could disrupt Hormuz traffic for “months,” even if Tehran’s missile-launching capabilities are degraded by U.S. and Israeli strikes, the wire service reported separately Wednesday. A container ship was attacked by an apparent naval drone while attempting to transit Hormuz Wednesday, forcing the crew to abandon ship, according to British maritime authorities (PDF). That’s at least the second suspected naval drone attack on Hormuz vessels since Saturday. Iran’s navy says it has targeted at least 10 ships and oil tankers in the strait since the war began, according to ISW; Reuters reports it’s tracking only nine vessels attacked so far.  

Developing: “Crude oil supplies from Iraq and Kuwait could start shutting within days if the Strait ​remains closed, potentially ⁠cutting 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) by day eight of the conflict,” Reuters reported Thursday, citing a note from analysts at JP Morgan.

Watch Hormuz shipping traffic dry up in this data animation from the Wall Street Journal, which also has an explainer about the strait’s importance to the global economy.   

And Danish shipping giant Maersk suspended operations in the region on Wednesday, including from ports at the UAE, Oman, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. 

Coverage continues below…

---

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1933, the Nazi party ascended to power with a 43.9% vote at the Reichstag elections, setting the stage for them to establish a dictatorship under Adolf Hitler.  

Ukraine will send experts to Middle East countries to help fight off Iranian drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday on Telegram. At least five governments have requested advice and assistance from the world’s acknowledged expert on downing Shahed attack drones: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and UAE. “I instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, together with intelligence, the Minister of Defense, our military command, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, to present support options for the respective states and provide assistance in such a way that it does not weaken our own defenses here in Ukraine. Our military has the necessary capabilities. Ukrainian experts will work on the spot, and the teams are already agreeing on this.” (h/t The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, whose independent reporting in Ukraine is worth supporting.)

Related reading: “Trump’s lightbulb moment: America needs Europe after all,” Politico reported Thursday.  

New: The Iran war is costing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 billion every day, a congressional official told Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic, the same day NBC News reported 4 in 10 Americans support the war—while more than 5 in 10 oppose it. (See also, “Fox News poll: Majority says Trump’s handling of Iran has made US less safe,” The Hill reported Thursday.)

Economic pains could grow: “Rising energy prices, snarled supply chains and higher government debt could all hurt American consumers,” the New York Times reported Thursday. 

One possible note of optimism: “If there is a cease-fire in the next week, trade flows could get back to normal fairly quickly.” However, “Even if the fighting stops, oil prices will remain elevated through the rest of the year, Goldman Sachs estimates, and if the strait remains closed for weeks, they could reach $100 a barrel.”

Another wrinkle: “​​Inflation is expected to rise, decreasing the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in the coming months,” the Times reports. 

Also taking a hit: The supply of fertilizer, which threatens not just U.S. farmers, but the entire global agricultural cycle, historian Adam Tooze explained Wednesday. 

Related reading:

• “Defense Industry Expects $50 Billion Package to Boost Munitions,” Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, adding that that could change as Iran bills come in;
• “Defense executives plan to meet at White House as strikes on Iran diminish stockpiles,” Reuters reports ahead of a planned Friday meeting;
• “Commentary: The US built up its missile defenses, and will need to do it again,” writes Frank Rose, who as a Hill staffer and later a State and Defense official, helped build them up.

A measure to limit Trump’s war powers on Iran failed in the Senate Wednesday in a 53-47 vote. Kentucky’s Rand Paul was the only Republican to join Democrats in support of the measure, while Susan Collins of Maine and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski voted against it. The Hill has more.

Trump officials who briefed lawmakers Tuesday night failed to answer two key questions about the war so far, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said in a statement Wednesday. 

1. “What imminent threat did Iran pose to the people and homeland of the United States on February 28 to justify a military strike without a Congressional Declaration of War or authorization of use of military force?”
2. “What is the clear end game for this operation?”

“Given the fact that six servicemembers have lost their lives and that we have tens of thousands of servicemembers in the region in harm’s way, getting coherent answers to these questions is a matter of life and death,” said Courtney, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Trump: “If we didn’t hit within two weeks, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon,” the president claimed Wednesday at the White House. “When crazy people have nuclear weapons bad things happen,” he said. 

• Reminder: Nearly 14 years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran was 90% on its way to having enough material to make a nuclear bomb. He famously brought a cartoon to the United Nations to make this point for the cameras on Sept. 27, 2012. 

But as recently as June 21, Trump himself claimed, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” Four days later, the White House shared remarks from four other top officials who agreed—including SecDef Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—and each used the word “obliterated” to describe the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

Analysis: “Trump’s willingness to single-handedly drag the country into conflict reflects his approach to executive authority more broadly: He takes already extreme conceptions of expansive presidential power and stretches them even further, remaking the presidency into something more like the monarchies reviled by America’s Founders,” Quinta Jurecic wrote Thursday for The Atlantic. 

Second opinion: “The president has unilaterally kicked off a regional war,” said former State Department counsel Brian Finucane, now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group. “That is a real departure from prior unilateral uses of military force in recent decades.” 

Jurecic concludes with this reminder: “Democracy allows people the freedom to make stupid decisions, so long as they make them collectively. But a system that allows a country to be dragged into war at the whims of a single person is not much of a democracy at all.”

Also worth noting: By assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday, Trump “shatter[ed] a precedent that had been sustained for decades by a mix of moral, political, and logistical concerns,” Tim Naftali of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs wrote Tuesday in The Atlantic. 

“This is an enormously consequential shift in the foreign-policy tools available to a president,” Naftali warns. “Killing anyone, let alone a dangerous foreign leader, without a trial involves a moral choice…A regime isn’t a chicken; decapitating it doesn’t necessarily bring about its death after a short dance. Indeed, in the modern age, no police state has died by assassination alone.”

Mixed reality: The White House on Wednesday posted a video that mixes “Call of Duty” videogame footage with real-world strikes inside Iran. Critics called it “warporn.” 

And lastly: For its ongoing Iran war, the Pentagon is using Anthropic’s AI tool Claude that Hegseth banned last week, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Claude is part of the Maven Smart System, “which is built by data mining company Palantir” and combines information from “satellites, surveillance and other intelligence, helping provide real-time targeting and target prioritization to military operations in Iran.” 

U.S. “Military commanders have become so dependent on the AI system that if [Anthropic’s CEO] directed the military to cease, the Trump administration would use government powers to retain the technology until it can be replaced,” a source told WaPo. Read more, here.

]]>

US-Israeli war on Iran, day 5: The global economy is still slipping as the war proceeds against Iran, with oil tankers stuck in the Strait of Hormuz as markets in Asia are getting hit particularly hard today. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. to underwrite risk insurance for commercial vessels transiting the Middle East, where many firms have changed course and routed tankers away from the conflict at increased cost. 

Latest: NATO air defenses downed an Iranian ballistic missile headed for Turkey, Ankara’s defense ministry announced on Twitter Wednesday. It’s unclear just yet what shot down the missile. France on Tuesday ordered its aircraft carrier from the Baltics to the Mediterranean Sea, citing a drone strike Monday on a British air force base in Cyprus. The Associated Press has more.

New: A U.S. Navy submarine sank an Iranian warship with a torpedo in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lankan officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Nearly three dozen people were rescued from that incident, and at least 80 people died in that attack, the wire service reported a few hours later. Pentagon officials confirmed the sinking of the warship, saying it was the first for an American submarine since World War II.

The warship is among 20 Iranian vessels the U.S. military says it has sunk as of Wednesday morning Eastern time. The BBC verified 11 of those sunken vessels in satellite imagery, reporting Wednesday. 

Developing: Trump is considering ordering the U.S. Navy to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in order to “ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” he announced Tuesday on social media. The insurance and naval-escort plans followed a meeting with his treasury and energy secretaries Tuesday at the White House. “U.S. support for tanker insurance is not unprecedented,” Reuters explained Tuesday. “After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. issued insurance policies to keep shipping moving amid elevated ​war-risk premiums,” and “During ​the Iran-Iraq conflict in the s, Washington reflagged tankers ⁠and provided naval escorts when private insurers withdrew coverage.”

But some experts doubt this plan will have a large impact. “Given concerns about the safety of crews and vessels moving through the Strait,” Evercore analysts wrote in a note Tuesday, Trump’s plan “will likely not be sufficient to meaningfully increase traffic” at least in part because “the heavy use of drones and potential for sea mines have changed the calculus for many.” (h/t Carl Quintanilla of CNBC)

Coverage continues below…

---

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2002, U.S. special operators fought the Battle of Roberts Ridge, one of the fiercest engagements of the war in Afghanistan.

Update: Four of the six American service members killed so far have been identified by the Defense Department. “All soldiers were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, Des Moines, Iowa,” officials said in a statement Tuesday. They include: 

• Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Fla.; 
• Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Neb.; 
• Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minn.; 
• Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa. 

The four perished on March 1 when a drone struck their makeshift facility in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, roughly a dozen miles south of the large U.S. base at Camp Arifjan, as CBS News reported Tuesday. 

Sgt. 1st Class Amor “was just a few days away from coming home to her husband and two children when she was killed,” the Associated Press reports. 

“Amor was moved off-base to a shipping container-style building a week before the drone attack. The building had no defenses,” her husband told AP. “They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups  in separate places,” he said.

Expert reax: “No reason to have a makeshift operations center in a war where you determine D-day,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “Those service members would still be alive if there had been a basic effort by their leaders at hardening/passive defense.” 

Contrasting solemnity: Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine opened his remarks Wednesday before reporters saying, “First, it’s with profound sadness and gratitude that I share the names of four of our six fallen heroes.” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, on the other hand, began by asserting, “America is winning—decisively, devastatingly and without mercy. Under the direct command of President Trump…” 

Hegseth also promised to begin using “500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound GPS-and-laser-guided precision gravity bombs, which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile,” he told reporters Wednesday. “More bombers, fighters are arriving just today,” he added. 

He also promised “in under a week, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies.” That’s a notably different picture from what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent painted when he told CNBC Wednesday morning, “Everything is going magnificently. The execution of Epic Fury is proceeding and doing better than planned. I believe last night we took full control of the Iranian skies, along with the Israeli air force. So the two most powerful air forces in the world now have complete control of the Iranian sky.” 

• Defense One’s Meghann Myers has more from Hegseth’s press conference, including some numbers of targets hit and missiles fired, here.

Developing: Many U.S. troops were told Trump’s Iran war is for “Armageddon” and the return of Jesus, which would seem to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to a flood of complaints from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, journalist Jonathan Larson reported Monday, citing data from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

According to one of the complaints, their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

One related problem for troops: “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony,” Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, told HuffPost on Tuesday. Read more from Larson’s initial reporting, here. 

The CIA’s station in Riyadh was allegedly hit in a drone attack Monday, the Washington Post reports. The attack caused “structural damage” and “collapsed” part of the embassy’s roof, according to a State Department alert obtained by WaPo, which added, “No CIA personnel were wounded,” and embassy personnel are sheltering in place.  

The U.S. consulate in Dubai was struck Tuesday and temporarily erupted in flames, CNN reported. “Videos geolocated and verified by CNN show a black plume of smoke rising over the consulate building, visible from a considerable distance.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed a drone hit the “parking lot adjacent to the chancellery building,” but everyone was accounted for afterward. 

For Americans stranded in the Middle East, Trump wrote a social media post Tuesday promoting the State Department’s evacuation planning and coordination website. “We are already chartering flights, free of charge, and booking commercial options, which we expect will become increasingly available as time goes on,” he said. 

Trump was asked Tuesday, “Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan?” He replied, “Because it happened all very quickly.” 

Related reading: “Dubai evacuation costs rise as high as $250,000 as more families flee,” the Financial Times reported Wednesday. 

The U.S. military base al-Udeid, in Qatar, was hit with a ballistic missile Tuesday, Qatar’s defense ministry confirmed in a statement. The attack didn’t cause any casualties, the officials said. 

Alert: Iran managed to strike the largest radar operated by the U.S. in the Middle East, located in Qatar: Space Force’s AN/FPS-132 Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radar System, which has an estimated cost of around $1 billion. Sam Lair of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies shared satellite imagery from Planet of the strike’s aftermath, noting, “It’s unclear how extensive the damage is,” however, “Debris from the damaged face has fallen on the roof of the main building and there is water runoff from the firefighting effort.” (To see more damage from the ongoing conflict, Lair is flagging multiple additional locations attacked across Iran, including missile bases and related production facilities.)  

Rewind: “Trump Promises to Defend Qatar, a Reassurance After Israel’s Strike,” the New York Times reported in October.

Strategic consideration: Given the great deal of concern in recent years about China’s missile stocks, and the associated threats those missiles pose to naval forces, officials in Beijing may be “looking at Iran’s failure to achieve political objectives via missile coercion and rethinking some assumptions/discussions they’ve been having about their war planning,” observed analyst Decker Eveleth, writing Tuesday on social media. (One particularly notable difference, of course, is China’s known nuclear stockpile compared to Iran’s reported lack of a single nuclear weapon.) 

Trump’s CIA is reportedly banking on Kurdish forces to “spark an uprising in Iran” and help topple the country’s leadership, CNN reported Tuesday. (Reuters had similar reporting a bit later.) “Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border,” and “are expected to take part in a ground operation in Western Iran, in the coming days,” a senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN. “The idea would be for Kurdish armed forces to take on the Iranian security forces and pin them down to make it easier for unarmed Iranians in the major cities to turn out without getting massacred again as they were during unrest in January.”

“Another US official said the Kurds could help sow chaos in the region and stretch the Iranian regime’s military resources thin,” five journalists for CNN write. “Still other ideas have centered around whether the Kurds could take and hold territory in the northern part of Iran that would create a buffer zone for Israel.”

Expert reax: “Count me extremely skeptical that this’ll prove a good idea—for (a) intra-Kurdish, (b) regional geopolitical and (c) internal Iranian reasons,” Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute wrote Tuesday on social media. He added that “it’s this policy pillar that’s generating concern about [likely undeclared] U.S. boots on the ground in Iran.”

Rewind: 

• “‘Trump betrayed us’: Fleeing Kurds condemn U.S. decision to leave Syria,” PBS Newshour reported in October 2019; 
• “Yes, Donald Trump Dumped the Kurds (And We Should Not Be Shocked),” wrote Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute that same month; 
• And “US abandons Syria’s Kurds, risking regional turmoil and an IS resurgence,” Kamran Matin of the University of Sussex wrote just five weeks ago for The Conversation. 

Trump lashed out at Spain during a meeting Tuesday at the White House with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain,” Trump said after Spain refused use of its airfields for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. 

“They said we can’t use their bases. We could use their bases if we want,” Trump alleged Tuesday. “We could just fly in and use it. Nobody is gonna tell us not to use it.”

AP notes: “It is unclear how Trump would cut off trade with Spain, given that Spain is under the umbrella of the European Union. The EU negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries.”

The view from Madrid: “We are not going to be accomplices to something that is bad for the world, simply because of fear of reprisals from some,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised speech Wednesday. “It’s not even clear what the goals are of those who launched the first attack,” he added. 

Context: “For Mr. Sánchez, in office since 2018, an assertion of independence was also a political necessity,” the New York Times reports. “His anti-Trump positions give his Socialist party a chance to shore up their base and ward off challenges from far-left rivals.”

Developing: Cuba may be next in Trump’s sights, if activists in Florida get their way, Politico reported Monday. It’s not that far-fetched either, since the Wall Street Journal in January reported the Trump administration “is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year.”  

“The president is feeling like, ‘I’m on a roll’; like, ‘This is working,’” an administration official told Vivian Salama of The Atlantic on Sunday. However, Salama cautioned, “A Cuba in turmoil could cause an influx of refugees to the United States at a time when the administration is trying to reverse immigration flows. A military campaign might set the stage for a revolt, but there is little organized opposition in the country after almost seven decades of repressive rule.” 

The White House is threatening Venezuela’s interim leader again as “Federal prosecutors have put together possible corruption and money laundering charges” against Delcy Rodriguez “unless she continues to comply with Trump’s demands,” Reuters reported Wednesday. “The probe focuses on Rodriguez’s alleged involvement in laundering of funds from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA” between 2021 and 2025. 

Related reading: 

• “The Missiles Hit the Gulf With No Warning. Then the Escape Planning Began,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday; 
• “US shale bosses warn they cannot replace war-hit Middle East oil,” the Financial Times reported Tuesday; 
• “House Republicans are publicly cheering Trump’s Iran war. Privately, many are worried,” Politico reported Tuesday; 
• “Canadian PM Carney says US and Israel’s strikes on Iran mark ‘failure of the international order’,” The Hill reported Tuesday; 
• And ICYMI, “US Marines fired on protesters storming consulate in Pakistan’s Karachi,” killing 10 people on Sunday, Reuters confirmed on Monday. 

Around the Defense Department

The U.S. military just carried out a joint operation against alleged drug traffickers in Ecuador, officials at Southern Command announced Tuesday on social media. Special operators are helping plan missions in what the New York Times wrote “appeared to be a major expansion of the U.S. military’s unilateral strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific. More, here.

The Army just launched an open call for industry ideas. “The Army is looking to stretch its limited research and development dollars by teaming up with private industry to develop projects that can be used by the service as well as commercial customers,” reports Defense One’s Myers, here.

Pentagon’s war on Anthropic based on ‘dubious’ legal thinking’ and ideology, not real risk, according to legal experts and officials who spoke with Defense One’s Patrick Tucker. Read their takes, here.

Related reading: 

• “Trump’s CISA nominee to exit Coast Guard role, but still in running to lead cyber agency,” reports Nextgov’s David DiMolfetta with Defense One’s Thomas Novelly.
• DOD and DHS spent more than $78 million sending 708 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, according to a report by the State Department’s Inspector General’s office.

]]>

The Joint Chiefs chairman gave an updated battle damage assessment, roundup of Iran’s capabilities during a briefing Wednesday.

Networks, government websites, and critical infrastructure providers should buckle up.