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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:
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.”
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 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 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.
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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.
Amid airspace and airport closures throughout the Middle East, the U.S. is urging Americans to depart immediately from more than a dozen countries in the region as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump’s war on Iran approaches its fifth day.
The U.S. military’s death toll rose to six on Monday after a strike on a poorly-protected tactical operations center in Kuwait, as CBS News reported Tuesday. Two other Defense Department employees were injured in Bahrain following a drone strike on a hotel there, according to the Washington Post.
And more than 780 people have been killed inside Iran since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack early Saturday, according to al-Jazeera reporting Tuesday. In an apparent effort to assert some leverage, Iran’s military announced Monday it has closed the Strait of Hormuz and any vessel trying to pass through would be attacked. The closure has sent global oil and gas prices soaring, Reuters reported Tuesday morning. That includes an 11-cent spike across the U.S. overnight, according to AAA. Investors are increasingly worried the war could stoke inflation as global markets tumbled Tuesday, the New York Times reports.
Israel sent more troops into Lebanon Tuesday after Hezbollah militants said they are ready for an open war. Relatedly, “Beirut’s southern suburbs were subjected to a series of strikes in the early afternoon Tuesday that came without warning, and the Israeli military later said it targeted Hezbollah officials,” the Associated Press reports.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem announced Tuesday that it “is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” according to an alert posted to social media. By contrast, the British, Germans, Chinese and Indians are all sending planes to evacuate their citizens from the region.
The State Department closed its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait Tuesday after Iranian drone attacks struck those facilities. “We feel abandoned,” retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner told CNN Monday amid the abrupt and unplanned evacuation advisories. The State Department is “in survival mode, quite frankly, because as we know, the administration reduced their budgets by almost one half over the past year,” he said. “So this is a difficult situation for people who are not used to being in a combat situation. And that, of course, is, quite frankly, probably 99% of the travelers that are here.”
After giving a variety of answers to nearly a half-dozen news outlets Sunday, Trump said Monday he won’t rule out sending U.S. troops into Iran “if necessary,” he told the New York Post. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it. I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary,’” he said Monday ahead of an at-times mumbling appearance before reporters at the White House.
By the way: Only 12% of Americans favor sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, and 60% said they do not think Trump has a clear plan for handling the situation. Another 62% think he should get congressional approval for any further military action. That’s according to new survey results published Monday by CNN.
Update: Trump was allegedly “dragged” into Israel’s war against Iran because he thought “he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch…since America would be dragged in anyway.” That’s according to the New York Times, reporting Monday after Trump spoke with right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson and following a congressional briefing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe just a few days before the war.
Rubio echoed that sentiment Monday, telling reporters, “We knew that if Iran was attacked, even by someone else, they would immediately come after us.”
Second opinion: “That’s not the definition of preemptive” Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of National Intelligence told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. “This is all based on the idea that, number one, we can’t control Israel, and number two, our entire war with Iran is because of what Israel is doing. In other words, Israel is the tail wagging the dog.”
Thousands of Iranians attended a funeral procession Tuesday for 175 people killed in an airstrike Saturday on an elementary school in the southern town of Minab. It’s still unclear who exactly targeted the school. The Times has a bit more in video, here, and in reporting Sunday, here.
Coverage continues after the jump…
Welcome to this Tuesday 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 Patrick Tucker. 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 1938, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia.
New: Trump alleges the U.S. has “a virtually unlimited supply” of munitions and “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies,” he said last night, writing four minutes before midnight on social media.
Just one day prior, “Inside the Pentagon, and among some members of the Trump administration, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control,” the Washington Post reported.
Spin zone: The White House circulated talking points for Republicans on Monday, which advised telling the American public the U.S. military is conducting “major combat operations” against Iran—as opposed to the U.S. actually being “at war” with Iran. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared that document on social media, here.
In video: The U.S. military released at least three airstrike reels over the last 24 hours featuring airstrikes against Iranian people and military assets. Those include naval strikes, exposed missiles destroyed, and mobile missile-launchers attacked in U.S. strikes.
Ally watch: U.S. military aircraft departed Spain over the weekend after the government there refused the use of its military bases for the war against Iran. Reuters has more. On the other hand, the Brits reversed their position and opened their airbases to U.S. military use against Iran. The BBC has more on that.
NATO chief Mark Rutte is working to keep Turkey close after Ankara’s leader said he’s trying to broker an agreement to cease the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Rutte said Monday on social media. Earlier Monday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called the attacks against Tehran a “clear violation of international law,” and “As their neighbour and brother, we share the pain of the Iranian people.” Rutte later praised Trump in a brief appearance on Fox TV Monday.
Also on Fox TV Monday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told viewers, “War is ugly. It smells bad. If anybody has ever been there and been able to smell the war and taste it and fill it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget.” While Mullin is on the Armed Services Committee, he has never served in the military.
“Fortunately, we have President Hegseth,” the senator said, apparently confusing the defense secretary’s title, and not once. “President Hegseth has been there,” Mullin assured viewers. He also later confused Iran with Iraq during a separate Fox Business appearance, suggesting the “Iraqi people” should overthrow their government before he corrected himself.
In missile-defense developments: Supply chains are exciting again. The Israeli military assessed that Iran had 2,500 ballistic missiles and was accelerating production, the Times of Israel reported on Sunday. By Monday, Iran “had fired at least 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles, and 541 [one-way attack] drones at the UAE. Another 97 ballistic missiles and 283 OWA drones targeted Kuwait,” according to public statements assembled by Derek Bisaccio of Forecast International.
The UAE is projected to exhaust its interceptor missile stock within one week at the current rate of fire, and Qatar within four days; both are urgently seeking additional military support from the United States and seeking drone and air defense capabilities from Italy, Bloomberg reported.
The U.S. is considering relocating Korea-based THAAD and Patriot batteries to the Middle East, the Chosun Daily reported Tuesday.
Iran likely possesses a “larger number of Shaheds” than the 2,000 ballistic missiles it was estimated to have retained after last June’s conflict with the U.S. and Israel, according to analysis by Bloomberg Economics defense lead Becca Wasser.
The U.S. produced only about 600 Patriot (PAC-3) missiles in 2025, according to Wasser, citing industry numbers. A Friday report by the Financial Times said that the U.S. had fired 150 last June during the brief conflict between Israel and Iran. The report quotes Center for New American Security fellow Stacie Pettyjohn assessment that the U.S. could “easily” spend “a year’s worth” of munitions in just a few days. And, at a cost of around $4 million a-piece, they are far costlier than Shahed-136 drones. Iran is limited in its ability to produce those and to secure parts. But Russia, should it decide to assist Iran, can produce 18,500 a year. Read more from our Saturday analysis.
Worth noting: The United States also has interceptor options beyond expensive PAC-3 systems, such as AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, or APKWSs, which are easier and cheaper to produce. But they are not “unlimited” either.
Related reading:
Afghan and Pakistani forces clashed again Tuesday in what is now the fifth consecutive day of fighting between the two countries, AP reports from Islamabad. More than 40 locations were attacked along both the northern and southern portions of the nations’ borders, Pakistani officials said. Both countries have claimed enormous casualties in the fighting, and each nation strongly disputes the other’s public estimates. More, here.
In Africa, the U.S. just sanctioned the Rwandan military for allegedly violating a peace agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That conflict is one of the 8 wars Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed he’s ended, as CNN pointed out following his recent State of the Union address.
In a new first, France said it will deploy nuclear-armed jets in allied nations across Europe, President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday. He called it “forward deterrence,” and said in a speech, “To be free, one needs to be feared.”
Background: “The speech primarily aimed to spell out how French nuclear weapons fit into Europe’s larger security posture in the wake of new questions raised by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and recurring tensions with US President Donald Trump over Ukraine, Greenland and NATO,” France24 reports.
Macron also vowed to increase France’s nuclear arsenal, citing “a period of geopolitical upheaval fraught with risk.” AP reports “It will be the first time France increases its nuclear arsenal since at least 1992.”
The leaders of Germany and Poland welcomed the moves, with Warsaw’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk writing on social media, “We are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us.”
Update: DOD’s “vibes-based” AI policy. OpenAI on Friday announced it had reached an agreement with the Pentagon involving “more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments,” including Anthropic’s for using the company’s AI models in classified environments.
The ongoing fight inside the Pentagon regarding frontier AI is mostly a “fight about vibes and personalities masquerading as a policy dispute,” Michael Horowitz, a former Defense Department official who worked on AI policy, told the Wall Street Journal Monday.
Background: In its statement last week, OpenAI said its “multi-layered approach” stipulates that “cleared OpenAI personnel are in the loop,” when it comes to the company’s cloud-deployed AI tools. The company says that they are not deploying “our models on edge devices” where operators could use them for targeted strikes. “And we have strong contractual protections. This is all in addition to the strong existing protections in U.S. law.”
Additional reading:
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Cloudflare’s network blocks over 230 billion threats per day. The volume indicates how routine and automated the attack cycle has become, and the patterns behind that volume point to a shift in how breaches begin and progress. Cloudflare’s …
Coordinated space and cyber operations left Iran “without the ability to see, coordinate or respond effectively,” Gen. Caine said.
Analysts say organizations should remain vigilant, though early indications show Iran-linked hackers have overstated their success.
Trump launches second war in two months: Four U.S. troops have died and more than 550 Iranians have been killed so far, including the leader of the country, in a new and ongoing war against Iran launched jointly by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday morning. Israel calls it “Lion’s Roar.” The U.S. calls it “Operation Epic Fury,” and it was launched without congressional authorization and virtually no public debate.
The war’s timing came from an intelligence tip about “a meeting of top Iranian officials [that] would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran,” the New York Times reported Sunday. “Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.” U.S. and Israeli forces had been preparing for months to launch a new series of strikes inside Iran. But the tip spurred them “to adjust the timing” in the hopes of accomplishing one of Netanyahu’s longtime goals: killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israeli officials said they had confirmed Khamenei’s death just hours after the initial attack. Trump confirmed it shortly afterward. The following morning, Iranian officials confirmed it as well. Top Iranian officials Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour were killed Saturday, too.
The U.S. troops were killed during the initial Iranian response, with another four wounded in those strikes targeting U.S. and allied forces across the region, Central Command officials said in an initial statement and a follow-up Monday morning. No further details were provided.
Trump reax: “Sadly, there will likely be more [U.S. deaths] before it ends. That’s the way it is—likely to be more,” the president said in a video posted to social media Sunday evening. “But America will avenge their deaths, and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization. They have waged war against civilization itself. Our resolve, and likewise that of Israel, has never been stronger.”
Regional blowback: At least 10 people in Israel have perished along with five others across the Gulf region as a result of retaliatory attacks from Iranian forces throughout the weekend, according to al-Jazeera. Protesters raged against the U.S. in Pakistan, where at least 23 were killed after demonstrators breached the outer wall of the American Consulate in Karachi; that death toll included 11 in Skardu, and two others in Islamabad, according to Reuters. A British airbase in Cyprus was hit by a drone overnight as well; later, the civilian airport at Paphos was evacuated after an object was spotted on radars. In Bahrain, a tanker reportedly linked to refueling U.S. naval vessels was also hit in port Monday morning, triggering a crew evacuation.
Kuwaiti air defense systems mistakenly shot down three U.S. F-15 fighter jets Monday morning, officials from both countries announced afterward. “All six aircrew ejected safely, have been safely recovered, and are in stable condition,” the U.S. military said in a statement.
More after the jump…
Welcome to this Monday 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 1867, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, imposing military government on most of the rebel states and conditioning their readmission to the Union on ratifying the 14th Amendment.
Oil and gas production across the Middle East has slowed, with facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Israel temporarily shut down amid Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks since Saturday. “Brent crude was last up 9% at $78.9 a barrel, set for its biggest daily jump since 2020’s COVID-19-related turbulence and just surpassing its surge after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,” Reuters reported Monday morning. The war also “ground shipping to a near halt in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil supply flows,” the wire service reported separately, noting Iran is “the third largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,” and provides “about 4.5% of global oil supplies.”
Suddenly chatty: After weeks of avoiding an opportunity to make his case to the American public—and to Congress, which the Constitution charges with authorizing war—Trump spoke by phone with several media outlets about the new war over the weekend. But he gave a variety of justifications and warnings about why and what might come next.
Trump’s war forecast: “We figured it will be four weeks or so,” he told the Daily Mail. “It’s always been about a four-week process so—as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks, or less,” he predicted Sunday. He gave the Times a similar window (“four to five weeks”).
Rewind: Trump campaigned as an anti-war candidate. That’s not how he has governed. “No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Trump,” Zachary Basu of Axios pointed out Monday. “He’s attacked seven nations, three of which—Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela—had never been targeted by U.S. military strikes. He authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.”
Latest poll: Just 27% of Americans approved of the strikes on Iran, while 43% disapproved and 29% were not sure, Reuters reported Sunday. And more than half of those surveyed (56%) said they think Trump “is too willing to use military force to advance U.S. interests.”
Notable: In launching the war, Trump claimed in a video address Saturday, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
But Iran was, in fact, not preparing to preemptively attack the U.S., White House officials told Congressional staff members Sunday, citing U.S. intelligence, the Associated Press reports. State Secretary Marco Rubio is expected to brief Congressional leadership on the Iran war sometime today.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth did not dispute that assessment in a press conference Monday. But he claimed Iran had amassed too many missiles for Trump to continue negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs. “The former regime had every chance to make a peaceful and sensible deal,” Hegseth said Monday. “Tehran was not negotiating. They were stalling, buying time to reload their missile stockpiles and restart their nuclear ambitions…Our bases, our people, our allies—Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.” Defense One’s Meghann Myers has more from that press conference, in which Hegseth did not mention the U.S. casualties.
Next: Hegseth is set to join Rubio and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine in a briefing before all lawmakers Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
Notable: The White House did not send any administration officials to Sunday talk shows to help make their case for war with Iran. But Trump confidant and longtime Iran hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC News, “Our goal is to make sure Iran cannot become again the largest state sponsor of terrorism.” When asked if Trump has a plan to guarantee that happens, Graham replied, “No. It’s not his job.”
Outside advice: “Killing the supreme leader was one thing. Ousting the regime will be another,” six reporters for The Atlantic warned, writing Saturday.
Historian reax: “The president is supposed to get Congress’s buy-in to go to war in part because that requirement forces an executive to convince the American people that a contemplated military action is worth their tax dollars and their lives,” Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College wrote Saturday. “Trump’s attack on Iran scorns the will of the people and their constitutional right to decide whether they want to pay for a war with their money and their lives.”
According to a Pentagon fact sheet, B-2 bombers, stealth fighter jets, recon aircraft, and other weapons were used to strike more than 1,000 targets in the first day of the U.S. war on Iran. On Sunday, U.S. Central Command released a list of U.S. weapons and platforms used in the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury, which began at 1:15 a.m. Eastern time on Feb. 28. Initial targets included aerospace forces and joint headquarters facilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iranian navy ships and submarines, anti-ship and ballistic missile sites, command and control centers, military communications capabilities, and air defense systems, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reports.
The operation also marked the combat debut of the Pentagon’s new LUCAS one-way attack drones—which, as Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported, are near-clones of Iran’s Shahed-136.
U.S. combat jets used in the war’s first day included F-16, F/A-18, F-16, F-22, and F-35 fighter jets; and the A-10 Warthog. Electronic warfare, warning, and reconnaissance aircraft included the EA-18G, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, unspecified RC-135s, and MQ-9 Reapers. Mobility aircraft included tankers and C-17 and C-130 airlifters.
Munitions and defenses used against Iranian attacks included Patriot Interceptors, THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems, and M-142 high mobility artillery rockets.
Iranian drones and missiles began hitting facilities in Bahrain roughly two hours after the first U.S. and Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday morning, Hlad reports. Many targeted the headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, while others hit residential buildings, and the Crowne Plaza—one of a handful of hotels popular with visiting U.S. officials and a frequent choice for military and embassy events.
When the drones came, “they sounded like lawnmowers or mopeds, and so loud it was like they were right outside,” an American connected to the U.S. military base in Bahrain said. “It sounded relentless.”
When the Navy base in Bahrain was attacked, it was nearly empty because an exercise drill the night before put it on “mission critical” status, the American said. However, the authorized departure of dependents was not called until an hour after the first strikes on Iran, so no families had left. Missile warnings started roughly 45 minutes later, and then the explosions began. Continue reading, here.
A fake memo also surfaced shortly after the attacks began, claiming that multiple apps were “compromised” and could be revealing servicemembers’ locations, Nextgov’s David Dimolfetta reports. The fake message claimed that Uber, Snapchat, and Talabat —a Middle East grocery service— were compromised and could reveal the location of service members. Some versions circulated also appear to say that locations of service members within the continental U.S. were also compromised.
CYBERCOM reax: “The command did not issue messages to U.S. service members to turn off location services on their electronic devices and did not issue messages that applications had been compromised,” an official said. Read more, here.
Related reading:
Anthropic to be ejected from Pentagon service. In what had seemed like it might be the big news of the weekend, President Trump on Friday directed all federal agencies—including the Defense Department—to “immediately cease all use” of frontier AI firm Anthropic’s technology, though he also said there would be a six-month “phase out period.”
Hegseth subsequently said he would designate Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” a step the company said had never before been imposed on a U.S. firm. He did not explain why a supply-chain risk would be permitted to operate in the Pentagon’s classified networks for up to six more months.
Why? Earlier on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said that DOD wanted unfettered use of Anthropic’s tools “for all lawful purposes”—and said that the notion that DOD wants fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance is a false narrative “peddled by leftists in the media.”
But Anthropic’s CEO said those are the only two limits he insists on. In “a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do,” Dario Amodei said in a Thursday statement.
Notable: Emil Michael “had been hammering out an alternative to Anthropic with its rival, OpenAI,” the New York Times reported Sunday. But after sealing that agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, “Altman claims his deal with the Pentagon includes the same prohibitions that Anthropic had wanted.”
Anthropic is not done, and officials vowed to sue the Defense Department over labeling it a “supply-chain risk,” the Times reports.
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Casualties include four U.S. service member deaths, three F-15s downed by friendly fire.