Keane: If kinetic operations resume, everyone influencing them is target one.
The [Hormuz] blockade is holding, the US now has twice the power in the region it had when the war started, and Israel is replenished. That is why the blow available now is absolutely significant. 1/
Keane: Tehran thinks it made progress by forcing the US into a pause and ceasefire after closing Hormuz.
That only encourages it to drag the talks out. In its mind, the longer this runs, the more pressure builds on Trump to make concessions he never wanted to make. 2/
Keane: The more flexible political figures have been sidelined. The foreign minister has little power.
These talks reflect the views of the head of the IRGC, and these are bona fide hardliners. The men with the guns are the dominant power in Tehran now. 3/
Ukraine Def. Minister Mykhailo Fedorov: cut Russia’s Starlink access, signed a record Patriot missile contract, bought more drones in one quarter than in all of last year, launched an AI center, reorganized the MoD and started an audit of the defense-industrial complex. 1/
Three months of new leadership — Fedorov for United24. First move: together with SpaceX, they cut Russia’s access to Starlink terminals. The Russian army lost communications for managing Shahed drones. 2/
Created a dedicated small air defense command and appointed Pavlo Lazar as deputy commander. Introduced after-action review for every strike on critical infrastructure and a rapid response mechanism. Interception rates across all aerial threats increased. 3/
Surrendering Donetsk Oblast without a fight means strategic suicide for Ukraine.
If Ukraine withdraws, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts become immediately vulnerable with no urban areas to anchor defenses, writes Mykola Bielieskov in Kyiv Independent. 1/
The Kremlin framed withdrawal from northwest Donetsk Oblast as a minor concession for peace. Trump largely accepted this framing.
The result: the White House now casts Zelenskyy’s defense of Ukrainian territory as the main obstacle to a ceasefire. 2/
68% of Ukrainians oppose surrendering northwest Donetsk Oblast even when told that US security commitments in return might be vague. Zelenskyy has no legal authority to cede Ukrainian territory regardless. 3/
North Korea has 50 nuclear bombs and enough material to build 40-50 more. It has 20 delivery systems including ICBMs that reach the US. Denuclearization has failed across 7 US administrations, Time for a new strategy, writes Victor Cha in FA. 1/
In 2006 at the six-party talks in Beijing, a North Korean diplomat told Cha directly: “We will never give up our nuclear weapons.”
The US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq because they had no nuclear weapons. North Korea was not willing to tempt the same fate. 2/
Every agreement failed because North Korea was never serious about giving up its weapons. The 1994 Agreed Framework, the 2005 six-party deal, the 2012 Leap Day Deal, Trump’s Singapore and Hanoi summits — all collapsed because Pyongyang kept building. 3/
“I am Ukrainian. If you [Russians] come here, I will have no choice but to kill every one of you who signs a contract.”
A Ukrainian soldier crashed a Russian university recruitment Zoom call in Krasnodar after posing as a Russian drone officer — The Telegraph. 1/
“The front line has barely moved in four years and Russia’s invasion created “a cemetery the size of two countries. Any Russian who steps onto Ukrainian soil will be killed.” 2/
The call took place at Kuban State Agrarian University, where students were being recruited for Russia’s drone forces. Staff cut the feed only after he warned that all their faces were recorded. 3/
iPhones powered by Apple and Google, cloud from Amazon and Microsoft, payments via Visa and Mastercard, LNG from the US replacing Russian gas — core systems are controlled by US firms, The Economist. 1/
European companies failed to compete at home.
Strict regulation slowed local firms, while US tech scaled globally and captured European markets — even governments rely on Palantir for data and SpaceX for satellites. 2/
Regulation hit European firms harder than American ones.
Compliance costs were manageable for Big Tech but blocked smaller EU players, turning rules into barriers that protected US dominance instead of limiting it. 3/