In particular, they cite the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which sits at the mouth of the Red Sea just off the coast of Yemen. The waterway is highly susceptible to attack from the Iranian-backed Houthis, who control most of Yemen.

“The Houthis are the ones who pioneered, in a way, this idea of using asymmetric capabilities to disrupt maritime traffic,” Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview with Military Times. “It has to be the right set of circumstances, but we could potentially see a situation in which they choose to engage on Red Sea shipping and ships attempting to cross the Bab el-Mandeb and also — by virtue of which way the water flows — the Suez Canal.”

Skeptics fear that if the Houthis stepped fully off the sidelines and into an aggressive posture on Bab el-Mandeb, another economic shock would result. This, in turn, would greatly complicate Trump’s desire to claim a victory in the war on Iran that began with combined U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28.

Elisabeth Kendall, president of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, said that the Houthis’ restraint thus far should be seen as strategic patience, not avoidance.

“The reality is that asymmetric warfare suits the Houthis. They don’t need to be accurate or sophisticated. They just need to harass shipping to achieve their goal of disrupting trade and pressuring the U.S.,” Kendall told Military Times. “The Houthis are seasoned fighters. They have been at war — on and off — for over 20 years. Their battle logic is unlike our own inasmuch as war has become a way of life and they are relatively comfortable with absorbing casualties."

Kendall explained that a Houthi attempt to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would “likely prompt a further spike in oil prices and, in time, inflation,” significantly ramping up pressure on Trump.

This all takes place against the backdrop of a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. After peace talks reached an impasse over the weekend, Trump recalibrated his strategy, aiming to turn the tables on Iran’s economy by seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sunday, the president said the U.S. Navy would begin blockading “any and all ships trying to enter, or leave,” the strait. By Monday, U.S. Central Command had refined the operational scope to only apply to vessels bound for or departing Iranian ports. CENTCOM stressed that it would not impede on the freedom of navigation and will be “enforced impartially.” The Pentagon has not explained how the mission would be carried out.

Under international maritime law, naval forces have the right of visit and search, which authorizes them to board vessels — regardless of flag — to determine their “enemy character.” This categorization hinges on whether ships are materially supporting Iran’s war effort, including through arms transfers or financing. If so, they may be subject to diversion or capture by U.S. forces.

James Kraska, professor of international law at the Naval War College, told Military Times that the approach essentially constitutes an expansion of longstanding bipartisan sanctions targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“The U.S. sanctions are so aggressive that it’s sanctioned other entities that aid or facilitate transactions that benefit Iran,” Kraska said.

He added that he sees the blockade and the American assertion of the right of visit and search as “simply a wartime extension of what we’ve been doing for a decade. It’s economic warfare.”

Trump’s blockade is expected to cost Iran roughly $435 million a day — or $13 billion a month — Miad Maleki, a former official with the Treasury Department, wrote in a post on X.

Vice President JD Vance has argued that with this move, Trump has flipped the script on the Islamic Republic.

“What [the Iranians] have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “They’ve basically threatened any ship that’s moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Well, as the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game.”

The six-month independent review, commissioned by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata in December, was originally set to be performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that administers three research centers supported by federal funding. The effectiveness study, according to a Pentagon official, was set to kick off with the 10-year anniversary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s lifting of the ban on women in ground combat roles at the end of 2015.

This review, the official told Military Times on Monday, is “in line with standard [Department of War] practice for evaluating the effects of significant policy changes.”

But a reevaluation of study requirements has led to a reassignment of the work, the official said.

“The Department has since recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests, based on established tasks, conditions, and standards, into the independent review to produce the comprehensive data required for this effort,” the official said. “DoW has engaged the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to assume responsibility for the study from IDA, effective April 2026. JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center, has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests, ensuring a unified effort that will further posture our warfighters to meet mission objectives.”

JHU/APL will now complete work over the next 12 months to inform what’s now being called the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment,” according to the Pentagon. The assessment will use established analytical techniques “to identify the dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units and provide evidence-based findings to inform force design, training, physical standards, and readiness decisions,” the official said.

A request for information to JHU/APL for more details on the study and data collection milestones did not receive an immediate response.

Pentagon officials emphasized the long tradition of conducting reviews of policy changes, citing specifically an internal assessment of the 2010 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that was conducted in 2021, and reviews by the Pentagon-connected Rand Corporation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the Blended Retirement System of 2015.

Historically, these analyses have been used to evaluate major changes and their impacts, but have not carried with them the possibility of reopening the matter for potential reversal. It’s not clear that the same considerations are in play here.

In a December memo first reported on by NPR, Tata described the review as gauging “the operational effectiveness of ground combat” elements and the impact of permitting women to enter the roles.

Leaders of the Army and Marine Corps were asked to provide the Institute for Defense Analyses with a broad slate of data ranging from training performance to command climate; and metrics showing individual service members’ readiness to deploy.

An email from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson at the time also appeared to open the door to changes based on the review, saying the Pentagon “will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda — this is common sense.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed opposition to women serving in combat roles in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” saying they couldn’t meet the physical requirement and adding, “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

His Senate confirmation hearing in 2025 softened the stance. He said then that women would continue to have access to ground combat roles, “given the standards remain high.”

In September, he announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who meet “the highest male standard.”

The Pentagon official said the pending combat effectiveness review, now to be carried out by JHU/APL, showcased the military’s commitment to “continuous learning and improvement.”

“These types of studies enable the Department to maximize our efforts in support of peace through strength,” the Pentagon official said Monday. “The ‘Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment’ is expected to further this tradition, increasing the lethality and readiness of the force.”

President Donald Trump, in a social media post after no deal emerged from peace talks this weekend in Islamabad, said the U.S. Navy “will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military’s Central Command later said the blockade will only apply to ships going to or from Iran, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. It will take effect on Monday at 10 a.m. in Washington, CENTCOM said.

Trump also said U.S. forces would interdict vessels that have paid tolls to Iran, even if those ships are now in international waters.

“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to pressure Iran to end its effective closure of the strait, a choke point for about 20% of the world’s oil, to all but the countries that secure safe passage from Tehran.

If Trump’s strategy succeeds, he would eliminate Iran’s greatest point of leverage in negotiations with the United States and clear the strait again for global trade, potentially lowering oil prices. But a blockade, experts say, is an act of war that requires an open-ended commitment of a significant number of warships.

“Trump wants a quick fix. The reality is, this mission is difficult to execute alone and likely unsustainable over the medium to long-term,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration now at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

IRANIAN RETALIATION

The U.S. military has not offered basic details yet about the blockade, including how many U.S. warships will enforce it, whether warplanes will be used and whether any Gulf allies will assist in the effort. Central Command declined to respond to requests for comment.

With enough warships, the U.S. Navy could set up a blockade that intimidates many commercial tankers from trying to power through with Iranian oil, experts say.

But would the United States be prepared to board and seize — or even damage or sink — ships that try to break the blockade? What if they carry oil for China, a major power, or U.S. partners such as India or South Korea?

And what would Iran do? Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, a former chief of U.S. naval operations, cautioned that Iran could fire on ships in the Gulf or attack infrastructure of the Gulf states that host U.S. forces.

“I honestly believe that if we begin to do it, that Iran will have some kind of a reaction,” Roughead said.

Iran’s threats to shipping have caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50% since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high in the United States through November’s U.S. midterm elections, which could see Trump’s Republicans lose control of the U.S. Congress if there is a public backlash. The war has already been unpopular.

GAS PRICE PROBLEM

Frustrated by Iran’s refusal to end the war on his terms, Trump on Sunday also floated the possibility of a resumption of U.S. strikes inside Iran, citing missile factories as one possibility.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy, noting Iran could send speedboats to mine the strait or put bombs against tankers.

“How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?” Warner asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Thousands of U.S. military strikes have severely weakened Iran’s military. But analysts say Tehran has emerged from the conflict as a vexing problem for Washington, with a more hardline leadership and a buried stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Trump threatened on Sunday that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded with a statement warning that military vessels approaching the strait will be considered a ceasefire breach and dealt with harshly and decisively, underlining the risk of a dangerous escalation.

Stroul said the crisis will require a long-term, international effort to resolve.

“Over the long run, this will need to be resolved through diplomacy and international political will,” she said.

Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added.

“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added.

Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier.

“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added.

IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST

Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”

“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.

The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.

“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.

‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIRE

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”

In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

IRANIAN DEMANDS

Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.

Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.

Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.

Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.

Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

Each side blamed the other for the failure of the 21-hour negotiations to end fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring since it began more than six weeks ago.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” said Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation.

“So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”

IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST IN THE TALKS

Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad ​Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Iran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”

“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.

Both the U.S. and Iranian delegations have now left Islamabad to return home, Pakistani sources told Reuters.

The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.

“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching an agreement. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues but that the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.

‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIRE

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the two-week ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”

In his brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked since the war began.

Vance said he had spoken with President Donald Trump as many as a dozen times during the talks. But even as the negotiations continued, Trump said on Saturday that a deal was not entirely necessary.

“We’re negotiating. Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me, because we’ve won,” he told reporters.

Even as the talks were taking place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday.

In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

IRANIAN DEMANDS

Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.

Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.

Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.

Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.

Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “all 28” of Iran’s “mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.”

Minutes before Trump’s post, reports started to emerge about the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the strait.

An Axios journalist, citing an unnamed U.S. official, posted that “several” U.S. ships had crossed the strait on Saturday, though Iranian state TV soon after reported a denial from an official with Iran’s military.

Trump has repeatedly said that American forces have destroyed Iran’s navy and air force while crippling its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

But fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global oil supplies. Throttling the strait has disrupted global energy markets.

U.S. gasoline prices have spiked even though most of the oil that flows through the waterway does not go to the United States.

Representatives from the U.S. and Iran began talks hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad on Saturday amid a fragile ceasefire in the conflict.

He promised to bomb every bridge and power plant in the country. Not as a warning. As an ultimatum, with a countdown, posted for the world to read along with the 93 million people he profanely threatened to annihilate.

The next day, civilians in Tehran were standing on the infrastructure he had threatened to destroy. Mothers, students, old men — they linked arms across overpasses, formed human chains around bridges and power plants, shielding them with their bodies, an NBC News video showed.

Asked whether he was concerned about war crimes, Trump told reporters he was “not at all.”

Retired American military officers said the threats themselves were likely war crimes — and that Trump had handed prosecutors a ready-made record. “He’s essentially self-incriminating,” one retired senior officer told reporters, per The Guardian.

Legal experts noted that threatening to systematically destroy civilian power plants and bridges, regardless of whether the strikes occur, can itself constitute evidence of criminal intent under the laws of armed conflict, according to The New York Times.

At the same time, White House envoys, billionaire Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were supposed to fly to Ukraine after Orthodox Easter this weekend carrying new security guarantees but were rerouted to Pakistan instead, for talks in Islamabad the same weekend the Kyiv visit was planned.

The administration was starting a war with one hand and promising to end one with the other. The same president who threatened to destroy civilian infrastructure in Iran on Tuesday is supposed to guarantee that no one destroys Ukrainian civilian infrastructure ever again.

“Is the U.S. going to provide Ukraine something like mutual security assistance? I don’t think so,” Ed Arnold, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former British military officer, told Military Times.

“And even if they did, do the Ukrainians believe in it? And pretty critically — does Putin believe in it?”

Moscow already had an answer.

“The Americans have a lot of other things to deal with, if you know what I mean,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“The primary movers in these so-called peace talks — the Americans — are now busy with other things,” a senior European diplomat told Military Times, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security assessments.

And they took the interceptors with them. The U.S. military burned through more than 800 Patriot missiles in the Middle East in three days — more than Ukraine has received in the entire war — while the production line makes roughly 600 a year.

The White House has since suspended Patriot export sales globally because of supply constraints, according to The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the administration rolled back Russian oil sanctions — the same restrictions that had been slowly strangling Moscow’s ability to finance the war — just as the Iran conflict sent crude past $100 a barrel, opening a window for Russia to sell at wartime prices with no cap and no consequences.

“Just this easing by America could provide Russia with around $10 billion for the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. “This certainly does not help peace,” according to Al Jazeera.

The sanctions rollback did not just weaken Ukraine’s position at the table — it actively financed the war Ukraine was supposed to be negotiating its way out of.

“This is throwing a massive lifeline to Putin,” the senior diplomat said.

Kyiv has fought harder anyway.

Its forces have recaptured more than 480 square kilometers in the southeast since January, pushing the ballistic missile interception rate toward 95%, and sent long-range strikes deeper inside Russia than at any point in the war — and for every short- to medium-range missile Russia fired in, Ukraine was sending more out.

Its forces achieved a drone advantage over Russia in what the Institute for the Study of War called a possible first in combat history, striking oil ports from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

But the Iran war has made those capabilities impossible to ignore. As Tehran launched waves of drones and missiles across the Middle East, nations scrambling to respond found themselves watching Ukrainian-developed systems do what their own could not — handing Zelenskyy leverage overnight that years of diplomacy never had.

Ukraine’s long-range drones have knocked out an estimated 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity, around 2 million barrels per day offline, in one of the most severe oil supply disruptions in the modern history of Russia, according to Reuters.

Washington did not celebrate any of it. The administration told Kyiv to stop striking, and the same week, Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest to campaign for Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán — Putin’s closest partner in the EU — while accusing European allies of election interference.

Zelenskyy confirmed that allies had sent Ukraine “signals” about scaling back strikes on Russia’s oil sector, per Reuters. The State Department formally warned Kyiv’s ambassador to quit the attacks.

“Having severed most support to Ukraine, undermined the trust of its allies and made clear that it will avoid applying any serious pressure on Russia, Washington is rapidly bleeding leverage,” Arnold wrote in a recent RUSI analysis.

But the Iran war may have had the opposite effect on Ukraine’s standing, Arnold told Military Times. The country Washington is pressuring to stop fighting has just demonstrated that its technology works and America’s deterrence does not.

In the space of weeks, Washington has eased the sanctions squeezing Russia’s war budget, told Kyiv to stop the strikes crippling its oil exports and conditioned security guarantees on surrendering territory Ukrainian soldiers are still holding — a sequence that, to the allies watching it unfold, has looked less like negotiation than an attempt to dismantle Ukraine’s leverage piece by piece.

The war in Iran, the peace deal in Ukraine, stability in the Far East — all of it seems to run through one man in the White House, the senior diplomat said, who does not seem to worry about the long-term consequences of his global actions.

“You’ve pushed a domino in the dark,” he said.

“You have no idea which other dominos are lined up, who’s in the line of fall, what you’re going to face as a consequence — because you looked at this problem in complete isolation.”

The agreement came after the FAA conducted testing in New Mexico on the laser system used by the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department and validated that proper safety controls are in place and do not pose undue risks to passenger aircraft.

Two earlier incidents posed serious concerns.

The U.S. military errantly shot down a government drone with the ​laser-based system on Feb. 25, leading the FAA to expand an area in which flights are ​barred around Fort Hancock, Texas.

The incident followed the Feb. 18 decision by the FAA to halt all flights for 10 days at the nearby El Paso airport because of the use of ​the Pentagon laser system by a Homeland Security agency without completion of an FAA safety review. The ​El Paso shutdown order was lifted by the FAA after about eight hours following ‌the ⁠White House’s intervention.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Friday.

The Pentagon has said there are more than 1,000 drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month. ​U.S. security officials have increasingly ​expressed alarm about ⁠the use of drones by Mexican cartels to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.

Several media outlets reported last month drones were seen over Fort McNair in Washington where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live.

There is no indication the Pentagon plans to deploy the laser at the base, which is close to Reagan Washington National Airport.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth last month called on federal watchdogs to review the ​decision-making process leading to the use of the systems and the ​FAA’s decision ⁠to close airspace.

The VA Detroit Healthcare System, VA Saginaw Healthcare System, VA Ann Arbor and Battle Creek Healthcare Systems will flip the switch from the VA’s legacy digital medical record to the new Federal Electronic Health Record, currently used by six sites across the VA.

The department’s adoption of the Oracle Health’s FEHR was halted in 2023 following a year-long pause over safety and functionality concerns. The program, which was introduced to medical centers in Washington, Oregon and Ohio between 2020 and 2022, experienced numerous setbacks, including incidences of harm to at least 149 patients, according to the VA inspector general.

The safety problems were tied to a system feature that caused some specialty-care referrals, follow-on appointments and lab orders to disappear from view.

VA officials announced in late 2024 that they planned to restart the project in Michigan in 2026, and in March 2025, announced they would accelerate adoption by adding nine more sites this year.

Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence said during an event Friday at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit that the VA expects to roll out the system to 26 additional sites next year.

“But already, folks in the VA system are knowing how well this is going to go. They’re asking to be moved up,” Lawrence said, according to the Detroit News.

Joining Lawrence at the Detroit event marking the “go-live,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said the department’s inspector general would monitor the system to ensure it was functioning.

“Our IG office is a wonderful group that helps us do better in what we do,” Collins said, according to the Detroit News.

The VA selected the system, made by Cerner, in 2017 after it was chosen by the Department of Defense for the military health system patients. The VA system originally was expected to take 10 years to adopt and cost $10 billion. That estimate was soon revised to $16 billion and now stands at $37.2 billion across the program’s lifecycle, according to Lawrence.

During the pause, the VA and Defense Department worked jointly to adopt the system at the James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago. Between the lessons learned during that rollout and revisions, VA officials have seen vast improvements in performance where it is used, according to Lawrence.

The deputy secretary wrote in a blog post in March that Oracle Health had “improved system performance, reliability and usability,” running it without any outages 87% of the time between June 2023 and December 2025. The system also attained “incident free time” for nearly two years from March 2024 to December 2025, Lawrence wrote.

“The Federal EHR is now reliably available to end users without system-wide outages. We have reduced disruptions, prevented lost productivity and ensured critical workflows continue without delay,” Lawrence said.

Over the last several weeks, the Michigan facilities told patients to expect fewer available appointments and anticipate pharmacy delays in the ramp-up to the switchover.

In a message posted on the VA Detroit Medical Center X social media page, officials told veterans they also may see different prescription numbers on medications until they refill their prescriptions in the new system and could expect to see trainers helping staff learn the system.

“What is not changing is the same high-quality health care you have come to expect at Detroit VA Healthcare System,” they wrote on X.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have told VA officials they are watching the restart closely and still have concerns about the system’s potential impact on veterans’ medical care and employee burnout.

Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee, said in a hearing in December, that VA physicians and pharmacists continue to have concerns over reliability and safety backstops.

“The only acceptable result is a flawless go live because our veterans cannot accept failure,” Barrett said.

Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., said she was concerned that the VA had not completed all recommendations from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO had made several recommendations on improving and implementing the system and the VA had not fulfilled them.

“We need to have the difficult conversations to make sure that both Oracle and VA are accountable to Congress, to VA employees, and most importantly to veterans,” Budzinski said.

Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director, said the VA is “ready to roll.”

“VA remains committed to successfully implementing a modern, interoperable Electronic Health Record system, which we refer to as the federal EHR, and we intend to implement that across the entire VA enterprise. As was mentioned, since our last hearing in February, VA has made significant progress towards meeting that goal,” Evans said the hearing.

No decision has been made, and the White House has not directed the Pentagon to draw up concrete plans for a troop reduction on the continent, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

But the discussions alone underscore how sharply relations between Washington and its European NATO allies have deteriorated in recent months. They also suggest that a visit to the White House on Wednesday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte failed to significantly improve transatlantic relations, which are arguably at their lowest point since NATO’s 1949 founding.

The White House has publicly said that Trump has considered withdrawing from the alliance altogether. Removing troops from Europe would allow Trump to dramatically lessen Washington’s security commitments on the continent, without formally withdrawing, a move that would test constitutional law.

The U.S. currently has more than 80,000 troops in Europe and has played a central role in Europe’s security architecture since World War Two. More than 30,000 of those troops are located in Germany, with sizeable numbers also stationed in Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain.

The official did not say which countries could be affected or how many troops might ultimately be withdrawn if Trump decides to move forward with the idea.

Asked for comment, a NATO spokesperson referred Reuters to Rutte’s interview with CNN on Wednesday.

In that interview, Rutte said that he understood Trump’s frustrations with the alliance, but that the “large majority of European nations” had been helpful to Washington’s war effort in Iran.

Following Rutte’s meeting with Trump, the secretary general told European governments that Trump wants concrete commitments to help secure the Strait of Hormuz within days, Reuters reported earlier on Thursday.

Alliance in crisis

While Trump has long had a tumultuous relationship with NATO — for years accusing European capitals of skimping on defense spending — the last three months have been particularly rocky.

In January, Trump provoked a transatlantic crisis when he renewed longstanding threats to annex Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. Since the war with Iran broke out on Feb. 28, he has expressed deep frustration that NATO allies have not offered to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies that has remained largely closed despite a fragile ceasefire announced this week.

NATO diplomats have previously said the U.S. has not made clear if it expects any mission in the Strait of Hormuz to start during or after the conflict, and they have also said the U.S. has not specified what particular capabilities it expects of each NATO country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that senior administration officials were discussing moving troops stationed in Europe out of countries whose leaders had been critical of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and into European countries whose leaders had been more supportive.

The White House official told Reuters that Trump was specifically discussing bringing troops back to the U.S., rather than moving them to different foreign countries.

The official said Trump was particularly irked about what he perceives as Europe’s attempts to brush off his attempts to acquire Greenland.

After meeting with Rutte in Switzerland in January, Trump had suggested a deal was in sight to end the dispute over the Danish territory. No such agreement has come to fruition.

“He asked NATO specifically to come up with a plan when we were in Davos, and they’re sort of not taking it seriously,” the official said.

Rutte travelled to Washington to mollify the president, who remains incensed at the alliance for refusing to intervene in the de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery that typically carries a quarter of the world’s oil and gas. The strait’s near-closure has prevented roughly ten million barrels of crude oil daily from reaching global markets.

But Trump, following the face-to-face talks, was far from conciliatory. He wrote on social media Wednesday that “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

In a subsequent post Thursday, he dismissed the response from the bloc as “very disappointing.”

Rutte acknowledged the discord with Trump, yet characterized Europe’s initial reticence to get involved in the war in Iran as a consequence of the president’s decision not to consult allies before the launch of Operation Epic Fury. He said the other member nations were taken by surprise by the joint U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran, and slower to respond as a result.

“To maintain the element of surprise for the initial strikes, President Trump opted not to inform allies ahead of time. And I understand that,” Rutte said during his remarks at the Reagan Institute’s Center for Peace Through Strength in Washington on Thursday.

“But what I see when I look across Europe today, is allies providing a massive amount of support —basing, logistics, and other measures — to ensure the powerful U.S. military succeeds in denying Iran a nuclear weapon and degrading its capacity to export chaos," Rutte said.

The NATO secretary general also underscored international efforts, spearheaded by Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to find a workable plan for a full reopening of the strait as hostilities wind down.

“The United Kingdom is leading a coalition of countries that are aligning the military, the political, and the economic tools that will be required to ensure free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. This is evidence of a mindset shift,” he said.

The Trump administration has asserted it will reassess its relationship with NATO once the war with Iran concludes, a review that officials say could include relocating American forces away from allies deemed unhelpful. The president has also weighed the possibility of withdrawing the United States from the alliance altogether.

At a White House press conference earlier this week, Trump traced the start of the icy relations back to Greenland.

The president, around the start of the year, began talking with increasing seriousness about annexing Greenland, the huge, semiautonomous territory under Danish sovereignty. At the apex of the crisis, Trump refused to rule out using military force. He ultimately backed down but the tremors from the episode are still being felt on both sides of the Atlantic.

“It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland,” Trump told reporters on Monday, adding, “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye, bye.’”

In the weeks since the Department of Defense’s troubled relationship with Anthropic burst into public view and led to the company being kicked out of the U.S. military, new defense-focused AI companies like Smack Technologies and EdgeRunner AI say they have experienced a shift in interest that would have been unimaginable just months ago. They have received a surge of overtures about possible contracts and meeting requests and been approached by investors who previously showed no interest.

The Pentagon’s growing animosity toward its top AI provider, Anthropic, has opened up opportunities for smaller rivals, who have long sought a foot in the door to the most lucrative government contractor in the world. A defense contract can lead to more business with other branches of the U.S. government, and is a useful signal of trust and safety for potential commercial clients.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in demand from customers and the government to get AI solutions fielded since Anthropic was declared a supply-chain risk,” said Tyler Sweatt, CEO of Second Front, a company that helps technology firms meet the requirements needed to operate on secure Pentagon networks. “Our customers are turning to us as the Pentagon turns to them to deploy quickly in the wake of the Anthropic blowup.”

Since the Pentagon deemed Anthropic’s products a “supply-chain risk” in March and the two sides became embroiled in a lawsuit, the military has expressed increasing interest in AI startups like Smack Technologies, saying, “We want more, we want demos, let’s talk about how we can move faster,” said Andrew Markoff, co-founder and chief executive of the 19-person startup based in El Segundo, California. In late March, a judge temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic.

Tyler Saltsman, co-founder and chief executive of EdgeRunner AI, described a similar experience. His company had been waiting more than a year for a Space Force contract to clear the Pentagon’s procurement machinery. It was signed within weeks of the Anthropic situation breaking into the open. “I can’t prove that the Anthropic drama sped this up,” Saltsman said, “but I have a sneaky suspicion it did.”

“The Pentagon will continue to rapidly deploy frontier AI capabilities to the warfighter through strong industry partnerships across all classification levels,” a Pentagon official said.

One Pentagon technologist has previously told Reuters that the falling-out with Anthropic, and the realization that the Defense Department was heavily dependent on one AI provider, forced the department to diversify AI providers.

Smack’s Marine Corps contract speeds up

For Smack, the clearest example of the post-Anthropic acceleration involves the Marine Corps. The company won a contract with the Marine Corps in March 2025 and delivered a successful prototype by October — software that compresses what is normally a months-long operational planning process into roughly 15 minutes.

Despite the successful prototype, momentum stalled. Full production had been budgeted for fiscal year 2027 — meaning October 2027 at the earliest. Through the 2025 holiday period and into early 2026, there was no clear direction.

Hegseth wants Pentagon to dump Claude, but military users say it’s not so easy

Then the Anthropic uproar occurred. Within weeks, Smack was invited to multiple meetings with the Marine Corps focused on a single question: how fast can this move into production this year? Markoff said there was “very specific guidance and movement and energy” toward getting the prototype ready for combat operations in 2026 — an acceleration of more than a year.

The shift extended beyond the Marines. Smack holds contracts with the Navy and Air Force, and Markoff said interest came in nearly immediately from U.S. Special Operations Command, and others.

EdgeRunner, which is deploying with the Army Special Forces groups and has received a contract with the Space Force, said the Navy has also dramatically sped up engagement. Meetings that had been biweekly or monthly are now happening multiple times a week.

Both EdgeRunner and Smack are now racing to get their systems operating at higher security classification levels — the gateway to the most operationally significant use cases and the largest military contracts.

EdgeRunner said the military has told the company it can get to IL-6, a security designation enabling access to secret and top-secret data, within three months — a timeline Saltsman described as remarkable, given that the process normally takes 18 months or longer. The acceleration, he said, is being driven partly by pressure from Pentagon leadership to cut through procurement bureaucracy, and partly by the urgency the Anthropic situation has injected into the department’s AI strategy.

The shockwaves have rippled outward, contributing to global economic strains and bringing conflict to Gulf neighbors whose economies depend on stability.

“This war will be remembered as Trump’s grave strategic miscalculation. One whose consequences reshaped the region in unintended ways,” Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges told Reuters.

Before the war, the Strait, a narrow passage carrying around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, was formally treated as an international waterway. Iran monitored it, harassed shipping and intermittently intercepted vessels, but it stopped short of asserting outright control.

In the new reality, Tehran has moved from shadowing tankers to effectively dictating terms. It currently functions as the de facto gatekeeper of the shipping route, selectively deciding on passage and on what terms. Iran wants to charge ships for safe passage.

Additionally, Iran has demonstrated resilience under sustained attack and retained the capacity to escalate further, projecting influence across multiple fronts and strategic choke points.

Its reach extends through Lebanon and Iraq via Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias, and into the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea, leveraging the sphere of influence of its Houthi allies.

At home, Iran’s leadership remains firmly in control - even though the country’s economy is in tatters and great swathes of infrastructure in ruins from American and Israeli bombs.

“What did the U.S.–Israeli war actually achieve?” asked Gerges. “Regime change in Tehran? No. The surrender of the Islamic Republic? No. Containment of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium? No. An end to Tehran’s support for its regional allies? No.”

Iran has absorbed the blows while retaining — and in some cases strengthening — its core instruments of power, said four analysts and three Gulf government sources who spoke to Reuters for this story.

As well as Iran’s control of Hormuz, the political picture now, they noted, is of a more brutal, empowered establishment, unaccounted nuclear material, continued missile and drone production, and ongoing support for regional militias.

Echoing Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said Washington had won a decisive military victory, and that Iran’s missile program had been functionally destroyed. The State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The United States, Israel and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire and U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to hold talks from Friday to discuss a long-term settlement.

While the ceasefire may halt the fighting, the Gulf officials said its durability hinges on addressing the deeper conflicts shaping the region’s security and energy landscape.

Any deal that falls short of a comprehensive settlement risks entrenching Iranian leverage rather than constraining it, they add.

Ebtesam Al‑Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center described the truce as a fragile pause, one likely to institutionalize new forms of instability unless it expands well beyond a narrow cessation of hostilities.

“This ceasefire is not a solution; it is a test of intentions,” Ketbi told Reuters. “If it does not evolve into a broader agreement redefining the rules of engagement - in Hormuz and across proxy theaters — it will amount to little more than a tactical pause before a more dangerous and complex escalation.”

“If Trump reaches a deal with Iran without addressing core issues - ballistic missiles, drones, proxies, nuclear concerns, and the rules governing Hormuz - then the conflict is effectively left unresolved and the region exposed,” said Ketbi.

HORMUZ IS RED LINE FOR GULF COUNTRIES

Iran, for its part, has put forward to Washington terms that include sanctions relief, recognition of enrichment rights, compensation for war damage and continued control over the Strait, underscoring just how far apart the sides remain.

Trump acknowledged receiving the Iranian plan and called it “a workable basis to negotiate.”

For Gulf countries who rely on Hormuz to export their oil, the Strait remains a non-negotiable red line, added Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi.

“Any outcome that leaves the waterway effectively in Iranian hands would be a defeat for President Trump,” with the potential repercussions of high energy prices extending into the midterm elections, he said.

What the war may nonetheless open up for Tehran, Shihabi added, is the prospect of a negotiated settlement — potentially including sanctions relief.

From a Gulf perspective, the picture is deeply unsettling. Mistrust of Iran is running high following Tehran’s strikes on energy facilities and commercial hubs across the region. More troubling still, the war has transformed Hormuz into an explicit instrument of leverage and coercion, analysts say.

The economic stakes are equally stark. Iran wants to charge fees for ships passing through the Hormuz shipping lanes as part of any permanent peace deal, a move that would reverberate far beyond the Gulf, hitting global energy markets and the economic lifelines of states along the opposite shore.

“If Iran can extract millions per ship, the implications are enormous — not just for the Gulf, but for the global economy,” Ketbi said. “In that sense, the outcome is not just a regional setback, but a systemic shift with worldwide consequences.”

More broadly, the analysts warned, it would signal a fundamental change in the regional order, from a strait governed by international norms to one effectively policed by a hostile state emboldened, not weakened, by war.

GULF DEMANDS

The ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, followed a war launched on February 28 by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said they aimed to curb Iran’s regional power, dismantle its nuclear program and create conditions for Iranians to topple their rulers.

Both sides declared victory. Trump called the ceasefire a “total and complete victory,” saying U.S. forces had achieved their objectives, while Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed Trump had accepted its conditions.

But the war has yet to deprive Iran of its stockpile of near‑weapons‑grade enriched uranium or its ability to strike neighbors with missiles and drones. The leadership, which faced a mass uprising months ago, withstood the superpower onslaught with no sign of collapse.

A Gulf source said restoring trust with Tehran would require stringent, written commitments — not informal assurances — covering non‑interference, freedom of navigation, and the security of key maritime corridors, including Hormuz, as well as the national security requirements of the Gulf states.

Those conditions, the Gulf source said, were conveyed to Pakistani mediators to be included as part of a comprehensive settlement.

An Israeli official said senior Trump administration officials had assured Israel that they would insist on previous conditions, such as the removal of Iran’s nuclear material, a halt to enrichment and the elimination of ballistic missiles.

Pakistan’s prime minister said Iranian and U.S. delegations were expected to meet in Islamabad on Friday for what would be the first official peace talks since the war began.

The remarks came one day after President Donald Trump declared a two-week ceasefire with Iran, stepping back from earlier threats to level Iranian civilization. The president said he hopes the pause will pave the way for negotiations toward a longer-term agreement.

Hegseth noted that the United States had carried out more than 800 strikes against targets in the hours leading up to the pause in hostilities.

He added that if Tehran had refused to agree, attacks would have expanded to include “power plants, the bridges and oil and energy infrastructure.”

The defense secretary went on to hail Operation Epic Fury as a “historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield,” painting a picture of an Iranian military in ruins.

“Central Command, using less than 10% of America’s total combat power, dismantled one of the world’s largest militaries, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said during a news conference at the Pentagon. “Their mission program is functionally destroyed. Launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles, depleted, and decimated.”

Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, enumerated the claimed results of the U.S. offensive in Iran: 80% of Iran’s air-defense systems destroyed, 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities and 450 ballistic missile storage facilities hit, and 150 ships sunk.

“Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come,” Hegseth asserted. “Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea...Iran’s Air Force has been wiped out.”

But despite the devastation, Tehran has remained defiant. The Islamic Republic, using a decentralized command structure built to survive decapitation, orchestrated an average of 120 drone and missile attacks per day across the region throughout the conflict’s duration. Crucially, it also maintained effective control over the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic leverage that sent oil prices soaring.

Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, 13 American service members had been killed in action and more than 365 had been wounded, according to the Pentagon.

Caine, for his part, struck a note of more guarded pragmatism.

“We welcome the ongoing ceasefire,” he said. “Let us be clear: a ceasefire is a pause, and the joint force remains ready if ordered or called upon to resume combat operations with the same speed and precision as we’ve demonstrated over the last 38 days. And we hope that that is not the case.”

Asked by reporters about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Hegseth expressed hope that Tehran would hand it over to Washington “voluntarily.” If not, he warned, America might still try to seize the material by force.

“It’s buried, and we’re watching it, we know exactly what they have,” Hegseth said.

“They’ll give it to us voluntarily,” he continued. “Or if we have to do something else ourselves — like we did in Midnight Hammer or something like that — we reserve that opportunity."

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, gave the order after intelligence indicated a nexus of senior IRGC leaders was meeting at the location, the official said.

The B-2s are equipped to drop 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, also known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, to destroy deeply fortified structures. Their immense payload allows them to strike targets at a depth beyond the reach of conventional munitions, while their flying-wing design enables them to penetrate sophisticated defenses with minimal detection.

US special forces rescue second F-15 airman from Iran

That weapon was key to last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, when bunker busters battered three of Iran’s nuclear installations. The B-2s made roughly the same 7,000-mile journey this time.

At the six-week mark of the assault against Iran, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck over 13,000 sites across the country. Other bombers in America’s squadrons, such as the B-1 and the B-52, have played prominent roles in the current campaign, Pentagon officials say.

Cooper’s directive coincided with a high-stakes search-and-rescue effort focused on two American airmen who ejected from a fighter jet over Iranian territory on Friday. President Donald Trump would later liken that operation to a Hollywood scene during a press conference at the White House.

“You would call it central casting if you were doing a movie for location,” he said Monday, revealing that hundreds of personnel were involved in the extraction. “Those pilots came in so fast and so quick and got out of there.”

Moments after extolling U.S. forces from the lectern, the president declared that when it came to the reach of the American military, nothing was off-limits. He warned he could destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.

The following day, in a post on Truth Social, Trump escalated the rhetoric even further, threatening to eradicate Iranian civilization if Tehran did not capitulate to his demands by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times that “only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

According to budget documents released this week by the Trump administration, the VA would receive a record $488 billion, including $205.6 billion in discretionary funding for programs and operations and $282.6 billion for mandatory spending — the column that covers disability benefits, pensions, insurance and other requirements.

Highlights in the discretionary spending proposal include $500 million to build permanent facilities for homeless veterans at the new National Center for Warrior Independence in West Los Angeles, $1.3 billion to construct a VA medical center in Manchester, New Hampshire, nearly $2 billion to replace the VA medical center in Indianapolis and $30 million to buy land for a new medical center in San Antonio.

The budget supports the VA’s proposed redesign of its community care contracts and programs and planned changes to the management structure at the Veterans Health Administration. It also funds the restart of the VA’s electronic medical record system program that has been on hold since 2022. The VA plans to restart the initiative this month at four facilities, with an additional nine joining later this year.

The VA estimates that the fiscal 2027 budget would provide disability compensation to more than 7.4 million veterans and support 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA health care.

According to the VA’s Budget in Brief documents, the proposal would support 443,327 full-time VA employees — roughly 9,000 fewer than in 2025 but up nearly 6,200 from fiscal 2026.

In a statement laid out in the documents, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the proposal will enable the department to deliver timely care and benefits for all beneficiaries.

“This budget request reflects VA’s efforts to find more effective and efficient ways to serve our mission and maximize our resources,” the document states. “The days of measuring VA’s progress by how much money we spend and how many people we employ, instead of how successfully we serve Veterans, are over.”

President Donald Trump’s $2.2 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027 includes nearly $1.5 trillion in spending for the Defense Department — up 44% from fiscal 2026 levels — and increases for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

It trims several domestic programs, including education, food and energy assistance, housing, the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.

The proposed VA budget increases spending for VA medical care provided in VA facilities but also increases the budget for community care, the VA’s program for covering the health treatment received by veterans in non-VA facilities.

The budget, which also includes a request for advanced funding for fiscal 2028, ensures that veterans benefits and services are never affected by a government shutdown. In addition, it increases medical care funding, with $96.2 billion requested for care provided in the VA medical system and $42 billion for community care.

As with fiscal 2026, VA officials asked to shift the mandatory funds designated to cover the costs associated with injuries or illnesses related to toxic exposures to the discretionary budget. The request of $52 billion from the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund is likely to raise concerns among Democratic lawmakers, who have argued that the continued use of the funds could jeopardize monies set aside for a specific purpose.

The proposal also seeks to cut what White House officials referred to as “divisive and wasteful diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” The budget documents did not specify which diversity programs the budget will defund, but officials said the reductions would ensure that “VA funding is used for critical VA missions: providing healthcare; benefits; and cemetery services for America’s veterans.”

The president’s proposed budget represents Trump’s vision for the federal government. It serves as a blueprint for Congress to consider as it starts its fiscal 2027 appropriations process.

In the last 25 years, the VA’s budget has ballooned significantly to address the needs of older veterans as well as the millions who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal represents a 10-fold increase for the VA since fiscal 2001, when the VA’s budget was $45 billion.

In the proposed budget for the Department of Defense, released this week, all troops ranked E-5 and below would receive a pay raise of 7%. The budget also allots 6% pay bumps for military personnel ranked E-6 to O-3, as well as 5% raises for those O-4 and above.

“The Administration recognizes the importance of America’s warfighters and their families,” the budget request reads.

Junior enlisted service members typically serve in pay grades E-1 to E-4 for their first enlistment term, which usually lasts four years. Mid-level noncommissioned officers include those E-5 to E-7, but the officers would receive different raise increases based on their rank. The proposed budget lists those ranked E-5 and below to receive a 7% boost, while E-6 and E-7 ranks would receive a 6% raise.

Across the military, troops received a 3.8% pay increase in fiscal 2026. Traditionally, the annual pay raise for troops ranges from roughly 3% to 5%. But in 2025, junior enlisted service members saw a large 14.5% pay hike, adding between $3,000 to $6,000 to their basic pay.

Prior to that increase, the annual base pay for junior enlisted service members could be less than $30,000, but with the raise, it brings the base pay to around that figure before housing stipends and other pay incentives.

As of September 2025, there are around 540,000 active-duty junior enlisted service members E-4 and below across the branches, making up 50% of the enlisted military, according to a 2026 Congress Defense Primer.

There were approximately 378,000 personnel ranked E-5 and E-6 across the military in September 2025, per Congress’ report.

“This enduring investment, far above the standard annual military pay raise, builds on the President’s recruiting and retention success, by doubling down on the Administration’s goal to restore America’s fighting force,” the proposal says.

The White House proposed the fiscal 2027 budget on April 3, outlining the Trump administration’s requests to Congress for federal spending beginning on Oct. 1, 2026.

President Donald Trump is requesting $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2027, a 44% increase from the already historic amount of nearly $1 trillion requested in fiscal 2026, per the proposal. The budget allocates $1.1 trillion in “base discretionary budget authority” for the DOD, the proposal says.

Before the upcoming fiscal year, presidents are required to submit their budget recommendations no later than the first Monday in February, but usually that deadline is missed. Congress then works to pass its own budget resolution after hearings. That can prove to be a challenge, as past stalemates in federal funding negotiations have led to government shutdowns.

If approved, the new budget, including the pay raises for lower-ranked service members, would begin Jan. 1, 2027.

Among the sites destroyed in recent weeks are key sites operated by the Iranian Ministry of Defense, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and hybrid entities that straddle civilian and military applications.

In some cases, the Israeli armed forces publicized the strikes either as early warnings or after the fact; in others, they were not publicized at all and were only detected by researchers using satellite imagery and ground-truth photos trickling out of Iran.

“It almost seems like an afterthought and lower priority to the war planners,” said Jim Lamson, a former Iran analyst for the CIA of 23 years who is now a visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies with King’s College London and senior research associate at the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

“To me, it doesn’t look like a real robust CBW-specific campaign,” he said, using the acronym for chemical and biological weapons.

Many of the sites that were struck, like the headquarters of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) or the Malek Ashtar University of Technology, were hit for their roles in the nuclear and missile programs rather than their chemical and biological research, according to Israeli messaging.

The Strait of Hormuz offers a lesson in air denial

This missing focus is not without reason: The chemical and biological threat from Iran may simply not be what some pundits have long made it out to be, Lamson said.

And it’s in line with the U.S. government’s own longstanding assessment. While Washington has warned that Tehran has long dabbled in research regarding these weapons of mass destruction, there has not been talk of any significant arsenal, stockpile or deployment capability for these tools in decades.

Iran is also a full member of both the Biological and the Chemical Weapons conventions. Defensive research – such as manufacturing agents to develop countermeasures and antidotes – is permitted under both pacts, though the line between defensive and offensive applications is blurry.

While the U.S. government in its own publications has repeatedly declared Iran non-compliant with its CWC obligations, Washington has for decades not outright accused Tehran of stockpiling an arsenal of chemical weapons. Instead, since the early 2000s, the State Department and CIA have softened the language to say that Iran “maintains the capability to produce CW agents.”

In its annual compliance reports, the U.S. has focused on historical transfers to Libya in the 1970s and 1980s, failure to fully declare its holdings of riot-control agents – which are illegal as a weapon of war, but legal for domestic use – and what it calls the incomplete declaration of production facilities. In 2024, it added that Iran had allegedly weaponized pharmaceutical-based agents such as fentanyl.

Iranian strikes target the infrastructure behind US airpower

Others in the think-tank world have persistently described Iran’s program as a real threat that should be addressed. In a memo penned days before U.S. President Donald Trump launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies highlighted the continued concerns with Iran’s research and access to chemical weapons, including the threat that they may be proliferated to its proxies in the region or used against its own people to crush uprisings.

Andrea Stricker, the foundation’s nonproliferation program deputy director, also cited intelligence assessments from the mid-2000s that suggested Iran had maintained an undeclared stockpile of chemical weapons.

Lamson has been tracking the Iranian sites involved in these programs since before the first waves of strikes in 2025, in which a handful of them were destroyed, but many more were left unharmed.

The Iranian chemical and biological programs, he said, were likely intended to maintain a “threshold capability” similar from its pre-war nuclear stance: having the dual-use industries and research established so that if Iran made the decision to manufacture the weapons, the breakout time would be relatively short.

But, at present, “this does not look like a dedicated offensive CBW program with production, agents and delivery systems to me,” he said.

Within Iran, the threat perception that the U.S. or Israel – which is not a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention and has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention – may use these weapons of mass destruction against Iran is very real.

It’s a deep-seated fear, rooted in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, during which Iraq, at the time supported by many Western countries and using Western-imported gear, launched thousands of chemical attacks against both Iranian soldiers and civilians. More recently, senior government officials in Tehran have alleged Western biological warfare against government targets in statements ranging from fearful to conspiratorial and often conveniently timed to distract from domestic failings.

As a result of the perceived threat, some factions in Iran’s government have pushed for a more active development of chemical and biological capabilities, and a broader consensus on maintaining capable defensive research abilities exists within the relevant policy elites.

What results is a latent capability, in the form of disparate institutes and industrial sites, that have some chemical and biological weapons applications, but no centralized, large-scale BWC program.

The lack of prominence in the shifting explanation for the war is puzzling, argues Lamson.

“If the U.S. and Israel really had concerns over chemical and biological weapons, like they’ve said over the years, why wasn’t it a stated threat, a justification, leading up to it?” he asked. In both the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003, Lamson pointed out, the military and even Israeli civilians had been equipped with gas masks and other gear to mitigate CBW attacks coming their way.

“Unless it was done very quietly, we haven’t seen that in this instance, which to me, again, reflects the fact that Israel and the U.S. for whatever reason, weren’t that concerned that there were going to be actual CW and BW used against them,” Lamson said.

The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, described at least some of the strikes as targeting sites that had been previously struck before and said the attack occurred in the early morning hours of Tuesday.

Vance, speaking separately in Budapest, said the strikes were not a change in U.S. strategy, with the Trump administration confident that it can get a response from Iran by 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in negotiations to end the conflict.

President Donald Trump is demanding Iran forswear nuclear weapons and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit waterway.

“We were going to strike some military targets on Kharg Island, and I believe we have done so,” Vance said.

“We’re not going to strike energy and infrastructure targets until the Iranians either make a proposal that we can get behind or don’t make a proposal,” he added. “I don’t think the news in Kharg Island ... represents a change in strategy, or represents any change from the President of the United States.”

Trump has given Iran until 8 p.m. in Washington — 3:30 a.m. in Tehran — to end its blockade of Gulf oil, or he will destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran. Iran says it would retaliate against U.S. allies in the Gulf, whose desert cities would be uninhabitable without power or water.

As the clock ticked down on Trump’s deadline, strikes on Iran intensified throughout the day, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. U.S. forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal, which Trump has openly mused about seizing.

Iran responded by declaring it would no longer hold back from hitting its Gulf neighbors’ infrastructure, and claimed to have carried out fresh strikes on a ship in the Gulf and a huge Saudi petrochemical complex.

TRUMP’S THREATS REACH NEW LEVEL

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.

“However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

Brian Finucane, a former U.S. State Department legal advisor now with the International Crisis Group, said Trump’s remarks “could plausibly be interpreted as a threat to commit genocide” under U.S. and international law.

With only hours left before the deadline, a senior Iranian source said Tehran was maintaining its refusal to reopen the strait without U.S. concessions that so far were not forthcoming.

Pakistan, which has been the main go-between, was still relaying messages, but Washington had not changed its tone, the source said. If the U.S. carried out Trump’s threat to hit Iran’s power grid, Tehran would plunge Gulf states including Saudi Arabia into darkness, the source added, a threat that had been conveyed to Washington via Qatar.

Earlier, another senior Iranian source told Reuters that Tehran had rejected a proposal conveyed by intermediaries for a temporary ceasefire.

Talks on a lasting peace could begin only after the U.S. and Israel stop bombing, guarantee not to start again and offer compensation for damage, the Iranian source said, adding that any settlement must leave Iran in control of the strait, imposing fees for transit.

Despite the intensification of strikes and rhetoric from both sides, global markets were largely paralyzed, hesitant to bet on whether Trump would follow through on his threats or call them off as he has in the past.

Among the reports of strikes inside Iran were attacks on railway bridges, a highway bridge, a petrochemical plant and an airport. Power was knocked out in parts of Karaj west of Tehran by a strike on transmission lines and a substation. Israel warned Iranians in a Persian-language social media post that anyone near railways would be in danger.

A synagogue in Tehran was destroyed overnight by what Iran said were Israeli air strikes. Footage in Iranian media showed Hebrew texts scattered in the debris.

“The synagogue building was completely destroyed and our Torah scrolls were left under the rubble,” said Homayoun Sameh, a lawmaker representing Iran’s Jewish community, one of the Middle East’s largest outside Israel. Israel’s military had no immediate comment.

PAKISTAN CONTINUES TO TRY TO BROKER TRUCE

Iran responded to an overnight attack on a major petrochemical site with a strike on Saudi Arabia’s huge downstream oil industry site at Jubail, where Western oil firms operate multi-billion dollar ventures. Video verified by Reuters showed smoke and flames rising.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that Tehran would “deprive America and its allies in the region of oil and gas for years.”

“Up to today we have shown great restraint for the sake of good neighborliness and have had some consideration in choosing targets for retaliation,” it said. “But all these restraints have since been removed.”

Iranians hoped the threatened escalation could be averted.

“I hope it is another bluff by Trump,” Shima, 37, from the central city of Isfahan, told Reuters by phone.

Trump has abruptly called off similar threats over the past several weeks, citing what he has described as productive negotiations with figures in Iran he has never identified. Tehran has denied any such substantive talks have taken place.

Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan said “positive and productive endeavors” by Islamabad to mediate an end to the war were “approaching a critical, sensitive stage.”

A proposal conveyed by Pakistan called for a temporary ceasefire and the lifting of Iran’s effective blockade of the strait, while putting off a broader peace settlement for further talks, according to a source familiar with the plan.

But Iran’s 10-point response, as reported by IRNA news agency on Monday, would require a permanent end to the war, the lifting of sanctions and a promise of reconstruction of Iranian sites damaged by the Israeli-U.S. strikes.

It would also include a new mechanism to govern passage through the strait — previously an open international waterway through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas typically passed. Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Iran has effectively closed it to most ships apart from its own.

Trump reiterated his deadline in a social media message on Sunday, declaring, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”

Iranian officials described the language as desperate or even mad.

The website cited a state-run media report and experts calling the vessel a “major leap in integrated combat capability” that “positions the vessel among the most advanced frigates in service today”.

A slew of announcements such as that one from March 30 shows AI expanding across a military that aims to “intelligentize” as it prepares for potential conflicts in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. But analysts say China is picking its AI battles carefully rather than expecting quick domination of the technology or short-term parity with the United States.

China is taking a “cautious official posture” toward AI in the armed forces, said Sophie Wushuang Yi, postdoctoral teaching fellow with Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University.

“China’s concept of intelligentized warfare has been embedded in official defense white papers since 2019,” Yi said. “But the open-source academic literature is frank that China cannot currently close the overall gap with the United States in military AI capability.”

Still, AI is becoming a force within the forces.

An institution under the People’s Liberation Army in January used AI to test drone swarms and, according to a test run shown on Chinese state television, one soldier supervised some 200 of the autonomous vehicles at the same time.

AI is taking on a greater role as well in the military’s use of space and cyberspace, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst for defense strategy and national security with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In space, he said, it can manage “complex orbital operations,” while in cyberspace it can plan and conduct operations against critical information infrastructure.

The military’s ability to use AI at machine speed would potentially let it exploit a faster “observe-orient-decide-act” loop compared to purely human-controlled systems, Davis said.

“That’s something that’s being demonstrated by the U.S. and Israel now in operational planning in the Iran war, where AI is playing a key role in identifying targets and planning mission packages,” the Canberra-based analyst said. “There’s no reason that the PLA won’t learn from that and utilize a similar capability.”

A testament to AI’s reach throughout the military, a March 26 PLA Daily report notes its use in battlefield perception, intelligent decision support and autonomous control systems.

PLA leaders particularly value AI decision-making because most of their people lack battlefield experience, unlike American counterparts, said Sam Bresnick, a research fellow with the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

He said its priorities include layering AI on top of computer networks, gathering volumes of data and the autonomy of unmanned systems such as uncrewed underwater vehicles.

Chinese officials want to surpass the U.S. in military AI use, Bresnick noted, but the government today fears information that AI could use or generate. “The data could go against Xi Jinping and Communist Party ideals,” he said. “They don’t want to lose control over it.”

The U.S. armed forces now have a “commanding” AI lead over China, the Modern War Institute at West Point said in a March 17 study.

It says the United States has more than 4,000 data centers versus some 400 in China. Four-year-old U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors shipped to China limit Beijing’s access to AI-related hardware, the study adds.

“China’s publicly stated position is considerably more cautious and more hedged than is commonly assumed in Western coverage,” Yi said.

“The PLA lacks the volume of real operational data that the U.S. military has accumulated over decades of expeditionary warfare, and there are unresolved doctrinal tensions between the decentralized decision-making that effective AI-enabled operations require and the PLA’s deeply embedded centralized command culture,” said Yi of the Schwarzman College.

China may have surpassed the United States in AI for drone swarms, however, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor in the Diplomacy and International Relations Department at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

“With the addition of drone carriers already in service, the PLA has taken the lead over the U.S. military in this category of AI military applications,” he said.

The Qinzhou frigate was commissioned last year and did a combat drill in the South China Sea, where Beijing disputes maritime sovereignty with five other governments.

Trump had earlier vowed to enforce a Tuesday night deadline for Iran to agree to a ceasefire deal or face broad attacks on power plants and other critical infrastructure. Trump is demanding Iran forswear nuclear weapons and reopen the Strait of Hormuz oil transit waterway.

“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said during a White House press conference.

“I hope I don’t have to do it,” Trump said.

Critics have said Trump would be committing war crimes if the U.S. attacked civilian power plants, a point that Trump dismissed on Monday.

“I’m not worried about it. You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said earlier on Monday during an Easter egg event for children on the White House South Lawn.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the briefing that the largest volume of strikes since day one of the operation against Iran would take place on Monday and warned Tuesday would have even more.

Rescue operation

Trump, joined by Hegseth and other top national security advisers, described in detail the weekend U.S. operation to recover a downed American airman who hid in mountainous Iranian terrain and eluded capture by Iranian forces.

He said the airman, identified only by “Dude 44 Bravo,” kept climbing higher in order to improve the chances for recovery. He said the airman was seen moving via an unidentified U.S. camera link. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack,” Trump said.

Hundreds of American forces were involved in the search and recovery mission and to prevent the Iranians from finding him first, he said.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who joined Trump at the event, said the agency had engaged in a “deception campaign” to convince the Iranians the airman was somewhere else.

Ratcliffe said that on Saturday morning the CIA got confirmation “one of America’s best and bravest was alive and concealed in a mountain crevice, still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.”

The pilot, shot down on Friday, was recovered on Sunday morning.

US special forces rescue second F-15 airman from Iran

“In a breathtaking show of skill and precision, lethality and force, America’s military descended on the area, the real area, engaged the enemy, rescued the stranded officer, destroyed all threats and exited Iranian territory while taking no casualties of any kind,” Trump said.

Hegseth said the lost airman used an emergency transponder to show where he was and his first message was: “God is good.”

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the recovered airman had been the “back seater” on the downed aircraft.

“In this case, the back seater’s absolute commitment to surviving made much of our efforts possible,” Caine said.

‘Willing to suffer’

Trump said, without providing evidence, that the United States has “numerous intercepts” from Iranian civilians urging the U.S. not to let up in trying to dislodge the Iranian government from power.

“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” Trump said.

Speaking to reporters earlier at a White House Easter event, Trump said a proposal offered by Iran was inadequate.

“They made a proposal, and it’s a significant proposal. It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough,” Trump told reporters during the event.

Trump said the five-week conflict could end quickly if Iran does “what they have to do.”

“They have to do certain things. They know that, they’ve been negotiating I think in good faith,” he said.

The incidents show the risks still facing U.S. and Israeli aircraft over Iran, despite assertions by President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that U.S. forces had total control of the skies.

The prospect of a U.S. service member alive and on the run in Iran comes days after Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” in a war that has killed thousands, sparked an energy crisis and threatened lasting damage to the world economy.

With Iran’s leadership defiant since the start of the war, its foreign minister in principle left the door open for peace talks with the U.S. via mediation from Pakistan, but gave no sign of Tehran’s willingness to bow to Trump’s demands.

“We are deeply grateful to Pakistan for its efforts and have never refused to go to Islamabad. What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on X.

Trump on Saturday repeated his threats to intensify attacks on Iran if it failed to reach a deal, or open the key Strait of Hormuz waterway.

“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” he said in a post on Truth Social.

As hostilities continued, Iran attacked an Israel-affiliated vessel with a drone in the Strait of Hormuz, setting the ship on fire, Iran’s state media said on Saturday, citing the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ navy.

Iran has virtually shut the ​strait, which normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

IRAN TOUTS NEW AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS

Iranian fire brought down a two-seat U.S. F-15E jet, officials in both countries said, while two U.S. officials said the pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft that crashed in Kuwait after being hit by Iranian fire.

Two Black Hawk helicopters engaged in the search for the missing pilot were hit by Iranian fire but made it out of Iranian airspace, the two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The scale of injuries to the crew was unclear.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was combing a southwestern area near where the pilot’s plane came down, while the regional governor promised a commendation for anyone who captured or killed “forces of the hostile enemy.”

Iranians, pummelled by air power since the U.S. and Israel began their attacks on February 28, celebrated the plane downings.

The Khatam al-Anbiya joint military command said it used a new air defence system on Friday, which targeted a U.S. fighter jet, three drones and two cruise missiles.

“The enemy should know that we rely on new air defense systems built by the young, knowledgeable, and proud people of this country, unveiling them one after another in the field,” a Khatam al-Anbiya spokesperson said, according to Iran’s state media.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted various areas in Israel in a wave of missiles and drones. They also targeted U.S. HIMARS rocket launcher batteries in Kuwait and Patriot missile batteries in Bahrain, according to a statement read on state TV.

Increasingly frustrated with the political fallout from the war, Trump is considering a broader cabinet shake-up in the wake of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s removal this week, people familiar with the discussions said.

Any potential reshuffling could serve as a reset for the White House as it confronts rising gas prices, falling ratings and worries for Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections.

“They’ve (U.S.) got themselves caught in a sort of double bind. If they simply leave, it’s really bad, and if they try to get the comprehensive defeat of Iran ... that looks really bad as well,” said Gareth Stansfield, a professor of Middle East politics at the UK’s Exeter University and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“They’ve managed to get themselves into a lose-lose situation with this one.”

PETROCHEMICAL ZONE STRUCK IN IRAN

Iranian state media reported air strikes at a petrochemical zone in southwestern Iran, with five people reported injured so far.

A projectile also hit an auxiliary building near the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, the Tasnim news agency said, killing one person. The operations of the plant were unaffected.

Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom evacuated a further 198 of its staff from the site on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, in evacuations already planned before the latest incident.

The Israeli military meanwhile said it had carried out “a wave of strikes” on Tehran.

Israel has been waging a parallel campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon after the militant group fired at Israel in support of Iran. Early on Saturday, Israel’s military said it was striking the militants’ infrastructure sites in Beirut.

The proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget would include $65.8 billion in shipbuilding capital to manufacture 18 battle force ships and 16 non-battle force ships, according to a White House overview of the budget.

“As waters around the world become increasingly contested, it is imperative that the United States be able to efficiently deliver the various naval platforms it requires to ensure maritime domain awareness and deterrence,” the overview said.

‘Everything costs what it costs’: Navy, Marine, Coast Guard chiefs call for historic funding

The budget’s maritime resources would be dedicated to building out Trump’s planned Golden Fleet, which he announced in December and which will include two so-called Trump-class battleships.

The president has claimed the vessels will be 100 times more powerful than any ship ever built.

The financial allotment would also fund next-generation frigates, increased public shipyard capacity, amphibious vessels, Columbia-class submarines, Virginia-class submarines, sealift vessels, hospital vessels, Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea tankers, a special mission ship, submarine tenders and “other vessels vital for logistics,” the budget overview said.

The previous fiscal 2026 defense budget dedicated $27.2 billion for the Navy to build 17 ships.

Speaking at WEST Conference in San Diego, California, on Feb. 12, Navy Secretary John Phelan said ship production would likely double in fiscal 2027.

The new budget would help rebuild the maritime industrial base by manufacturing ships that were easier to construct than combat ships, which require complicated radar systems and nuclear propulsion systems, the Navy secretary said.

The request ultimately requires approval by Congress and will be debated by lawmakers in coming weeks and months.

The 2027 budget request comes as the president faces risky choices abroad, with the administration sending U.S. service members to the Middle East, and a public at home feeling the economic crunch of skyrocketing gas prices due to the conflict.

The request ultimately requires approval by Congress, where disagreement over Trump’s spending decisions recently led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The president’s budget also reflects the administration’s political priorities ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November, when Trump’s Republicans hope to maintain their small majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

The huge proposed surge in defense spending to $1.5 trillion, up from about $1 trillion in 2026, includes a 5-7% pay raise for military personnel at a time when thousands of service members are actively deployed.

The defense request will please defense hawks on Capitol Hill, but also highlights how Trump is trying to pay for his doubling-down on military pursuits, even after Republicans boosted defense spending last year in party-line legislation.

The Pentagon already requested $200 billion in extra funding to pay for the Iran war, but the White House has not yet officially made that request to Congress, where it is also likely to face scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties.

Other specific funding increases proposed by Trump include his controversial Golden Dome missile defense shield, money to build up critical mineral supplies for the defense industry and $65.8 billion to build 34 new combat and support ships.

Funds for shipbuilding, a priority for Trump since his first term, include initial funding for the so-called Trump-class battleship as well as submarines.

It is unclear how this new spending would impact the U.S. budget deficit because the projections were not included by the White House. The deficit is expected to grow slightly in fiscal 2026 to $1.853 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill often treat White House budget requests as suggestive, as appropriators try to negotiate behind the scenes to maintain their own legislative priorities. But Trump’s latest budget will likely add to the ongoing tension with congressional Democrats over funding federal programs that they see as important — and plan to campaign to protect — as the president seeks to cut federal programs.

“Savings are achieved by reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized, and wasteful programs, and by returning state and local responsibilities to their respective governments,” the White House said in a budget fact sheet.