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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ​will not attack a NATO country, and he played down media ‌reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe warned Russian officials against such an attack earlier in the week. "He's not going to attack a NATO territory," Trump said of the Russian leader while speaking to reporters ​in the Oval Office. Earlier in the day, Trump told Axios in a ​phone interview that there would be no such attack, and that Ratcliffe, who ⁠flew to Russia on Tuesday to meet briefly with intelligence counterparts, had not ​been dispatched to...

WASHINGTON — A purported deal between Iran and Oman to control the Strait of Hormuz and share revenue from fees is “not even close to done” and would be meaningless so long as President Trump’s blockade of Iran remains in effect, a US official told The Post. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed Wednesday that the two nations had agreed to terms to control the shipping bottleneck — but The Post’s source said that ill-defined terms are still believed to lack full approval from Iran’s leadership. “The deals don’t mean anything unless we approve it. It...

After completing final assembly, the aircraft recently made its way to Aircraft Final Finishes, where it will receive its paint and finishes, including the stealth coating that helps reduce its radar signature.

MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - A U.S. military transport plane landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport ​on Tuesday, data from the flight ‌tracking service Flightradar24 showed. The large Boeing Globemaster with the U.S. registered tail number 07-7181 had flown ​direct from Riga, in Latvia, and ​landed in Moscow at around 0700 ⁠GMT. The Kremlin said ​it had no information on the plane. The aircraft had arrived in Riga on August 23 from the ​U.S. Camp Springs airbase near Washington DC, ​data from Flightradar24 showed.

Nearly six months after the U.S. Navy evacuated 1,300 family members from Bahrain at the start of the Iran war, officials are saying the evacuees cannot return for the foreseeable future and should find new homes elsewhere. The evacuation has left families in limbo and forced military officials to improvise solutions for support programs that were never designed to sustain a displacement lasting this long. Some evacuees say they have spent tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket for basic living expenses. Others are sleeping on the floors of temporary housing, while their cars and furniture are stranded in...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Tuesday said President Trump will have to resume a full war with Iran days after the initial failed ceasefire deal expired. Asked if the president should follow through on his threat last month to “bomb and destroy” at least “ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” near Tehran if the Iranian regime fired at U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Scott answered in the affirmative. “I think he’s going to have to,” the Florida Republican told NewsNation’s Blake Burman in an appearance on “The Hill.” “I mean, here’s a president that doesn’t like war. None of...

President Trump confirmed the US isn’t expanding the window for peace talks with Tehran on Monday as the US-Iran memorandum of understanding’s 60-day deadline for negotiations expired. “Well, they want to make a deal, but they’re not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary,” President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The president has demanded a ceasefire that will end Iran’s nuclear program but Tehran wants to pursue a “nuclear energy” program. The MOU failed to meet major objectives, like reopening the Strait of Hormuz, ending Tehran’s nuclear program and reaching...

Iran has decided to shift its policy from defensive to "fully offensive" due to the deadlock in efforts to agree on a permanent end to its war with the United States, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday. Progress towards peace talks and a resumption of oil tanker traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz has ground to a halt, with no sign that the warring parties are moving towards ending the conflict that the US and Israel launched on February 28. "Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region, as...

Andrei Klepach, the chief economist at Russian state development corporation VEB.RF, was reportedly fired on Aug. 16, a day after Russian media widely circulated his warnings that Russia was losing its economic and technological competition with the West. Russian independent media outlet The Bell reported Klepach’s dismissal on Aug. 16, citing two people familiar with the matter. The report came two days after The Moscow Times published excerpts from Klepach’s May remarks, which were subsequently picked up by other Russian media. Speaking at an event organized by the Moscow Exchange’s Nikitsky Club, Klepach reportedly said Russia would be unable to...

U.S. Central Command has unveiled Task Force Falcon Strike, a new multinational attack drone force for the Middle East. This unprecedented initiative integrates U.S. and regional militaries to deploy unmanned one-way attack systems across air, surface, and sub-surface environments. The move comes amid rising Iranian and Houthi drone attacks, prompting CENTCOM to seek a unified, multi-domain deterrent. Allies are being invited to join this coalition, which builds upon earlier U.S.-only efforts like Task Force Scorpion Strike. Falcon Strike will utilize advanced autonomous systems, including USVs, UUVs, and UAS, marking a significant shift towards a more aggressive, collective defense posture in...

The U.S. military has enough assets to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday, adding ships could be rotated in and out ​of the region as needed. Hegseth's comments suggest he is advising U.S. President Donald Trump that the ‌U.S. military can keep applying economic pressure on Iran for as long as needed to help so-far failed negotiations to end the conflict, begun in February. He spoke in Panama after addressing the crew aboard ​the USS Gridley, a guided-missile destroyer, which had previously deployed to the Middle East.

The two most senior members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, flew out of last month’s NATO summit in Turkey on what was effectively a decoy plane following an Iranian threat, while Trump was secretly moved to a smaller military jet, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The official, who was briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of presidential travel, said Rubio was aware of the switch and details of the threat behind it but could or would not say why he had...

Key Points Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people in an attack on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. U.S. forces fired missiles at a container ship attempting to breach Washington’s blockade of Iranian ports in the Gulf of Oman. The twin incidents show how the war is inflicting a toll on two of the world’s most critical shipping lanes. ================================================================== Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people aboard a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday, the first reported fatalities from attacks targeting Red Sea shipping in more than a year. Within hours, U.S. forces said they...

The intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine has bounced back to previous highs, according to long-time Ukraine watchers — a welcome boost during a critical window of opportunity for the Ukrainian war effort. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the intelligence committee’s ranking member and a longtime proponent of more U.S. assistance to Ukraine, told POLITICO he sees evidence of an improved intel-sharing agreement — and believes it’s helped Kyiv gain an advantage in Moscow’s four-year-long war.

Russia has attacked Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least 21 people, as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said interceptors "could have saved lives". Kyiv and the surrounding region experienced the deadliest strikes it had seen this year overnight, with 17 people reported dead. Attacks in Kharkiv and Donetsk also killed one and three people respectively. Ukraine, who has consistently urged allies for more US-made Patriot missile interceptors to defend against Russian ballistics, has not reported intercepting any of the missiles in the overnight attack. Zelensky added delays in receiving anti-ballistic systems from partners leads to "horrific casualties and...

The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano’s answer: the victor gets to define victory — and everywhere you look, the region is moving Trump’s way. Iran War Turns into Trump Middle East Triumph: We are about to see the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. Like the pharaoh, who missed every warning sign up to the parting of the Red Sea, the critics and questioners of Trump’s tug-of-war with what’s left of the Iran regime seem obtuse to the prophetic truth that the...

The US military has exhausted nearly 80% of its interceptors for a key missile defense system as senior US military commanders are warning that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile is “dangerously low,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Stockpiles of key air defense systems have been particularly depleted during the war with Iran. The US military has burned through nearly four-fifths of its THAAD missile inventory compared to pre-war numbers and roughly half of its Patriot interceptors since the start of the war, according to two sources familiar with the latest inventory report. The disclosure of the low THAAD...

President Donald Trump cast doubt in recent days on allegations that Russia is helping Iran target U.S. forces, even as members of his own administration acknowledge Moscow and Beijing are supporting Tehran in other ways. Trump dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claim that Russia supplied Iran with satellite imagery of U.S. military installations in the Gulf, saying any assistance would have been "very unimpactful" given the damage inflicted on Iran's military. "We’ll find out if that’s true. I’ll ask Putin. We’ll find out," Trump told reporters at the end of July.

The possibility of an agreement with Hamas is reigniting the question of whether Israel is repeating past mistakes when it puts trust in a terrorist organization that some say sees deals as merely a tactical means and not a binding obligation. In an interview with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News, Middle East expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar warns that the safest way to avoid falling into a trap is to refrain from signing deals with Hamas. "They have a long history of violating agreements," he said. "As far as they're concerned, particularly when it comes to non-Muslims, deception, hiding, stalling for time,...

Donald Trump said on Saturday night that the US would hold off on any new strikes on Iran provided a deal to end the months-long conflict is quickly reached – marking the president’s latest climbdown from extravagant threats to hit the Tehran regime hard. The Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump on Saturday to express concerns about his strike plans, it was reported. Trump’s reversal also came after Iran threatened to retaliate decisively against its neighbours in the event of US strikes, while Kuwait reported being hit by Iranian drones on Saturday and two ships were attacked off...