The moment is ripe for Mr. Trump to focus on aligning Arab powers with the U.S. and Israel around the common goal of containing Iran, said former national security officials who attended the International Defense Exposition (IDEX) in the United Arab Emirates last week.

Former Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command Robert Harward told Threat Status that Israel’s battering of Tehran’s most powerful regional ally, Hezbollah, the fall of the pro-Iran Assad regime in Syria, and the severe damage wrought by Israeli airstrikes on military targets inside Iran have created a once-in-a-generation opening for Washington to capitalize on a regional paradigm shift.

But the opportunity for deepened U.S.-Arab cooperation on Iran is also tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more pointedly, the future of Gaza. The Trump administration is grappling with frustration among Arab leaders over the Israeli military’s widescale bombing of civilian areas across the enclave.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia, who would be linchpins of any serious regional strategic deterrence against Iran, are dead set against Mr. Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza and say they support only a two-state, Israeli-Palestinian solution. The question is whether the Trump administration can reconcile the Gaza issue with broader security goals on Iran. “How this administration is to embrace this opportunity,” said Mr. Harward, “will set the stage here in the region.”

The Pentagon became the latest executive branch to tell Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk to stay in his own lane, circulating a memo over the weekend that said rank-and-file U.S. military officers should disregard an order instigated by Mr. Musk to document their accomplishments for the week or face termination.

Acting Undersecretary of Defense Darin S. Selnick posted a message on the Defense Department’s X page saying the department will conduct its own reviews “in accordance with its own procedures.” Mr. Selnick’s statement was similar to the one new FBI Director Kash Patel issued to Bureau personnel over the weekend, telling staffers to ignore the Musk-generated directive from the White House Office of Personnel Management.

Mr. Trump has assigned Mr. Musk’s DOGE the task of slashing the size of what he calls a bloated federal government filled with unnecessary bureaucrats. Threat Status will be tracking how the pushback from the Pentagon and the FBI affects DOGE’s reputation. The weekend’s developments came after Mr. Trump moved on Friday to fire Gen. Brown as the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

There was more hand-wringing in Canberra on Monday, as Australians mulled their naval defenses and their government’s confused response to news that Chinese warships had conducted live-fire exercises off the U.S. ally’s eastern seaboard.

A flotilla, including a cruiser, destroyer and supply ship of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), was reported in the area last week, and on Friday, three commercial flights traveling between Australia and New Zealand diverted from their paths due to the reported Chinese live-fire drills.

It later emerged that the PLAN warships had previously announced plans to conduct the drills, but at least some parts of the Australian government were unaware that the notice had been issued. “We weren’t notified by China. We became aware of the issue during the course of the day,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a Radio Perth interview. 

In the past week, Mr. Trump has ridiculed the Ukrainian president with “sophomoric insults, mislabeled him a ‘dictator’ and blamed Russia’s illegal invasion on Ukraine, suggesting that its desire to walk alongside America as a NATO member provoked an unnecessary war,” writes Washington Times Assistant Commentary Editor Jeffrey Scott Shapiro.

“Mr. Trump’s administration also refused to co-sponsor a United Nations resolution reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and demanding that Russia withdraw its troops,” writes Mr. Shapiro, who asserts that the president’s “entire approach to the Ukraine war signifies a shameful retreat from the Reagan doctrine to stand beside nations facing Russian aggression.”

“It also reveals stunning hypocrisy in the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ policy, which supposedly supports nationalism,” Mr. Shapiro writes. “Nationalists respect territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence. They do not dictate that other countries bow before tyrants who violate them.”

Even those unfamiliar with military culture can notice a “stark difference in the style and tone of the Army’s recruitment ads since Jan. 20,” writes Jeremy Hunt, a former U.S. Army intelligence captain, describing “one recent Army ad featur[ing] a soldier in the gym effortlessly deadlifting 500 pounds and declaring to the camera, ‘Stronger people are harder to kill.’”

It’s a “stark contrast” from the Biden era, one of the most famous ads of which “showcased an Army officer named Emma marching in an LGBTQ pride parade,” writes Mr. Hunt. “Though the cartoon ad had much to do with Emma’s journey of sexual identity, it had little to do with our military’s core mission: to deter, fight and win our nation’s wars.

“This sea change in advertising style isn’t merely about aesthetics; it signals to the world that our military is serious and prepared to fight,” he writes. “It also signals to potential recruits that service in our military no longer means 11-week diversity, equity and inclusion training programs or lessons on climate change. That’s why I expect the impact of this new direction to lead to historic increases in military recruitment.”

• Feb. 23-26 — Web Summit Qatar, Web Summit

• Feb. 24 — NASA’s Moon to Mars Roadmap: Charting the Next Year, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Feb. 25 — The Day After: Yair Lapid’s Vision for a Peaceful Middle East, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Feb. 25 — Nuclear Energy & American Leadership: A Blueprint for the Future, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Feb. 26 — 2025 Defense Software & Data Summit, Govini

• Feb. 26 — ‘Seven Things You Can’t Say about China,’ with Sen. Tom Cotton, Hudson Institute

• Feb. 26-27 — Global Space & Technology Convention & Exhibition, Singapore Space & Technology