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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.

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.

US President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran would proceed in two phases and described the negotiations as Tehran’s “last chance” to sign an agreement. He said the first phase would focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with the goal of having it “completely open” by Tuesday. “The second phase will be the denuclearization,” Trump said, adding that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. “has not agreed” to grant Ukraine licenses to produce Patriot missile systems, apparently backtracking on one of Kyiv’s top priorities in its war against Russia.The advanced military technology is “a hard thing to give away,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, adding that a country that receives it could “someday turn on you.”“You have to be very careful,” Trump said. He said the U.S. and Ukraine are still “talking about it.”Trump’s latest comments on the war in eastern Europe came three days after he spoke at the White House...

The region prepares for another escalation after President Trump threatened new strikesIran fired a drone barrage into Kuwait on Saturday, hitting a U.S. ally following President Trump’s vow to intensify military strikes in a rapidly expanding Middle East war.Kuwait said it shot down the Iranian volley, but the renewed fire added more tension to a region bracing for more conflict. Trump ordered the military to launch a fresh attack on Iran to bring Tehran to the negotiating table, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.AdvertisementU.S. embassies in the Middle East told Americans to consider departing the region. Airlines are extending flight...

The Pentagon is confronting a growing reality after months of fighting Iran: America's stockpile of missile defense interceptors. It is shrinking so much, military planners are weighing whether they can continue the current cycle of limited retaliatory strikes. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, using open-source budget numbers provided to Congress, estimates U.S. Patriot interceptor inventories have fallen from roughly 2,300 pre-war to fewer than 827. THAAD interceptor inventories have also dropped from 452 to fewer than 278. CSIS warns rebuilding those stockpiles could take three years or more, raising concerns about protecting U.S. forces and bases worldwide if...

Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told Reuters, as it rebuilds its defences amid war with the United States. The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, ‌is one of Tehran's largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air defences since the outbreak of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in ‌Iran's ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure. The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and...

President Donald Trump vowed to hit back hard at Iran after it attacked US bases in Jordan on Wednesday, as the Middle East war reignited and once again drew in the Islamic republic's proxies.The warning came after a short lull in the fighting that had spurred hopes of a return to negotiations appeared to draw to an end, sending oil prices jumping five percent over fears of disruptions to global supplies.On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia and the United States announced strikes on militant bases in Iraq, while US ally Israel accused Iran-backed Hezbollah of a truce violation.- 'War by other means'...

Follow the Money Toward WWIIIJuly 28, 2026 | SundanceIt has been said that all wars are “bankers wars,” however, against the modern era of inverted fascism where corporations tell the govt what policies take priority, the more accurate truism ‘is all wars being controlled by money’, not necessarily banks.The European Commission has constructed a very special kind of proactive financing for Ukraine that doesn’t require them to give their own €uros to the historically corrupt country. Partly because the EU doesn’t have their own money, and partly because everything the EU does in the sphere of finance is always a...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his last in-person meeting at the White House, reportedly sold President Donald Trump on starting a war with Iran. Now, the GOP's America First wing fears he's about to pitch the president on ramping up attacks."I think all of President Trump's most ardent non-'Israel First' supporters are furious," said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. "Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II — with every one of them a disaster for America First."The two men are set...

Each year, millions more graduates are thrust into China’s already saturated jobs market. The situation for this year’s cohort, flooding into an increasingly crowded pool of applicants fighting for an insufficient number of positions, is arguably the bleakest yet. The competition is intense, especially for jobs that offer weekends off and proper social insurance With more than 10 million Chinese students graduating each year since 2022, a figure that is only growing, it is the scale of the situation that is an exacerbating factor, with authorities tasked with finding meaningful work for the equivalent of a medium-sized European nation each...

Iran summoned a Ukrainian diplomat in Tehran on Sunday to protest an attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, as the war in the Middle East threatened to overlap with the Ukraine conflict. Iran said the attack left one sailor dead and injured several others. The country’s foreign ministry complained to Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran early on Sunday and “conveyed Iran’s strong protest over the ‘hostile and criminal act.’” Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported. In a post on X highlighting Ukraine’s attacks on distant Russian targets, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that his country’s...

TEHRAN, Juy 25--RIA Novosti. The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Ministry reported. "The Iranian Foreign Ministry strongly condemns Ukraine's attack on an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea on the morning of Saturday July 25. The attack resulted in an explosion on the vessel, killing one sailor and injuring another. This attack is a violation of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter and an act of aggression that could further fan the flames of war" the ministry said in a post on its Telegram channel. The...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Russia is preparing to bring an additional 30,000 North Korean troops into its war against Ukraine, a move that would dramatically expand Pyongyang's direct involvement in the conflict if confirmed. "We also see Russia's cooperation with North Korea. Russia wants to bring in another 30,000 North Korean troops," Zelensky said in his nightly video address, according to Reuters. He added that preparations to receive the troops had been underway since June in Russia's Voronezh region. The claim comes nearly two years after North Korea first sent troops to support Moscow under a growing...

President Donald Trump insisted Russia and China are “not participating” in the Iran war. The president made the declaration Friday in a Truth Social post. The post included Trump claimed he is doing “very big favors” for Chinese President Xi Jingping: "President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies. Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President [Vladimir] Putin, despite...

Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf have prompted U.S. intelligence analysts to investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or ​advanced drone technology, said four people familiar with U.S. intelligence. These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters, said U.S. intelligence officials have ‌not yet reached firm conclusions about the possible Russian involvement in the attacks on CIA facilities. But they cited the strikes' effectiveness and apparent precision, as well as Russia's broader technical support for Iran, as possible evidence. Reuters and other media have reported — and U.S. officials have...

Donald Trump is weighing up a massive expansion of the war with Iran after Tehran launched fresh strikes against US military sites across the Gulf, including Amazon services in Bahrain and vital power and water infrastructure in Kuwait. Nearly 100 US service members have been injured in recent weeks, according to the Pentagon, as the latest round of fighting enters its tenth day. On today’s episode of Iran: the Latest, Venetia Rainey and Arthur Scott-Geddes look at the news that Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker a mini 10-day ceasefire even as Iran has hit two more tankers...

Tehran has spent decades preparing for — and welcoming — a U.S. ground invasion, a senior Iranian official has claimed, as fresh explosions rocked the region on the eighth day of renewed U.S.-Iran strikes. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian American academic identified as a regime "Tehran had just launched a "new missile" while decentralizing and burying its arsenal deep underground to withstand sustained American air campaigns. "The Americans are planning an invasion. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen in the next few days. But they have plans for an invasion," Marandi, a...

Just before dawn, the bridges began to fall.One by one, American missiles reduced them to crumpled concrete, strewn across river beds and gorges.For a week, the US had bombed southern cities, cranking up the pressure on Iran to relinquish control of the Strait of Hormuz.But now the US military was going for the transport arteries connecting key southern ports to the rest of the country.The bombings leave Bandar Abbas, a city of 500,000 people where roughly half the country's trade comes ashore, almost completely isolated.