Mr. Rubio and Trump adviser Elon Musk engaged in a war of words with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski over the weekend, urging him in a series of messages on Mr. Musk’s X platform to be quiet and thankful for keeping Russia away from his country’s doorstep. 

In a message calling for a peaceful end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Mr. Musk said his Starlink system, which provides high-speed internet access through connections via satellites, is the “backbone” of the Ukrainian army. Mr. Sikorski replied with a post telling Mr. Musk that Poland is paying some $50 million for Ukraine’s Starlink access and may decide to spend its money elsewhere. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Mr. Sikorski wrote.

Mr. Rubio rushed to Mr. Musk’s defense, saying Mr. Sikorski was “making things up” and that “no one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink.” The secretary of state posted on X that the Polish foreign minister should “say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.” 

Mr. Musk then piled it on further, telling Mr. Sikorski: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea Monday hours after U.S. and South Korean troops opened their annual joint-military drills that Pyongyang has long claimed are a rehearsal for an invasion.

The firings marked the fifth such launch event since the start of 2025. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff described the missiles as close-range. 

In a related development, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared Saturday in photographs inspecting progress on what North Korea’s state-controlled media reports described as a “nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine.” The photos, which provided no date or location for the images, showed a beaming Mr. Kim speaking to officials at a naval engineering facility under the hulls of large, under-construction vessels.

Mr. Trump says a nuclear deal with Iran could be announced within days. The president revealed over the weekend that he wrote a letter to Iran’s supreme leader with a warning that without such a deal, the U.S. will “go in militarily” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The comments during an interview on Fox News prompted a cautious response from Iran, which said Sunday it would consider talks as long as they are confined to concerns about the militarization of the nuclear program. Tehran claims the program is peaceful, despite decades of warnings from the U.S., Europe and others that Iran is close to building its own nuclear bomb.

Prior to Sunday’s statement, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had rejected talks with the U.S., warning they would be aimed at imposing restrictions on Tehran’s missile programs and regional influence. Rumors have swirled in recent days that Russia may be mediating between Washington and Tehran, but a Kremlin spokesman pushed back at the rumors on Monday.

Clashes between Syrian security forces and armed loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad are reported to have killed more than 1,000 people in recent days, in the worst violence to rip through the country since insurgents led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, toppled the Assad regime.

An ambush on a Syrian security patrol by gunmen near Latakia, a largely Alawite and pro-Assad area, reopened the wounds of the country’s 13-year civil war, according to The Associated Press. A subsequent counteroffensive against the Assad loyalists has brought havoc to several cities and towns.

Syria’s foreign minister met Sunday with his counterparts from neighboring Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. The group sought to project calm and called for the lifting of Western-led sanctions on Damascus. The United Nations estimates some 90% of Syrians live in poverty. The country’s new Islamist authorities have struggled to convince the U.S. and Europe to lift sanctions to start rebuilding the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has tapped Todd Lyons to be acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Madison D. Sheahan as deputy director. Mr. Lyons has been a senior official in ICE’s deportation division for years. His promotion and Ms. Sheehan’s appointment come as Ms. Noem has struggled for ways to get deportation numbers up to where the president wants them.

Mr. Trump has made swift work of getting the southern border in order, but deportation numbers of migrants already in the country are actually down compared to the Biden administration, largely because there are so many fewer border crossers. The slower pace has irked Mr. Trump and led to the sidelining of longtime ICE official Caleb Vitello, whom Mr. Trump had previously tapped as acting director of the agency.

ICE has not had a confirmed director since the Obama administration. Mr. Trump’s picks in his first term and President Biden’s nominee during his tenure failed to make it through Senate confirmation.

• March 7-13 — SXSW Conference, SXSW

• March 11 — The Future of Space Policy, International Institute for Strategic Studies

• March 11 — U.S.-India Relations in the Trump 2.0 Era: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Road Ahead, Hudson Institute

• March 12 — The Role of the Panama Canal in Global Commerce, Atlantic Council

• March 13 — Collaborating for Resilience: Japanese and U.S. Industry Cooperation on MRO for USAF Systems, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• March 13 — Germany’s Election Aftermath: Implications for Foreign Policy, Wilson Center

• March 17-19 — 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, ARPA-E