The fatwa issued against Mr. Trump comes amid deep concern about Iranian sleeper cells already in the U.S. and prepared to conduct operations on American soil. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, reiterated the threat Sunday and told CBS News that the U.S. must take “seriously that there could be sleeper cells in the United States.”

The federal government warned of a heightened threat environment after the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. And just last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it arrested 11 migrants from Iran. One of the targets is accused of being an Iranian army sniper, another has ties to Hezbollah, and a third is deemed a known or suspected terrorist.

Mr. Trump has blamed former President Joseph R. Biden for allowing those Iranian sleeper cells into the U.S. Border czar Tom Homan said that 1,272 Iranian foreign nationals were released during the Biden administration. 

It’s been more than a week since U.S. airstrikes hit Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. But there are still serious questions — and conflicting narratives — about the current state of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Mr. Trump was adamant Sunday that Iran was not able to move its stockpiles of enriched uranium before the American attacks. The president said flatly, “They didn’t move anything,” though satellite images taken before the strikes show convoys of trucks lined up outside the Fordo facility. 

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog group, had a different take. He told CBS News on Sunday that “Iran had a very vast, ambitious program, and part of it may still be there.” He conceded that it’s difficult to know whether Iran moved key pieces of its nuclear infrastructure ahead of the U.S. airstrikes, and he pushed for IAEA inspectors to be allowed back inside Iran immediately.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told lawmakers last week that the strikes on Iran’s lone metal conversion facility set the nuclear program back years. 

Mr. Trump says he’s found buyers for the wildly popular app TikTok — though he was tight-lipped on the details and said only that the buyers were “a group of very wealthy individuals.” The president told Fox News on Sunday that he’ll reveal details of the deal in about two weeks.

TikTok, owned by the China-based company ByteDance, was set to face a ban in America amid concerns that the app funnels Americans’ data back to the Chinese Communist Party and also serves as an effective tool for Beijing to promote its favored narratives to U.S. audiences. Mr. Trump intervened this month and stopped that ban from taking effect.

TikTok’s path to survival in America hinges on finding a new buyer and separating the app from ByteDance. Speculation as to who that might be has been all over the map, from tech billionaire Elon Musk to “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary and others, to leading tech giants such as Microsoft or Amazon.

The biggest sticking point of any deal is Chinese approval. Mr. Trump acknowledged Sunday that he’ll “probably” need Beijing to sign off on any deal. 

There are any number of answers to that complex question, but here’s one of the biggest: Defensive capabilities need to be far more agile than the weapons themselves, putting the U.S at a theoretical disadvantage in the event of a hypersonic weapons attack from a rival nation such as China.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast, Mark Lewis, president and chief executive officer of the Purdue Applied Research Institute, breaks down the technical details around hypersonic weapons. Mr. Lewis, who formerly served as the Pentagon’s senior-most scientist, explains that designing effective defensive systems to stop maneuvering hypersonic missiles is one of the greatest challenges facing the U.S. military and the defense industry today.

“The defender, the system that’s trying to stop the offensive system, has to be more maneuverable than the thing it’s trying to stop. It has to be about three times more maneuverable,” Mr. Lewis says. 

Designing such defensive capabilities and integrating them into a cutting-edge missile shield that can protect the entire continental United States is at the heart of Mr. Trump’s Golden Dome project, which he aims to implement before he leaves office. 

Betrayal may be at the core of the U.S.-China dynamic. For more than four decades, Washington pursued engagement with Beijing — opening markets, bringing Chinese students to American universities and engaging through diplomatic channels — in the hope that such engagement would lead to major reforms inside China.

“Instead, the Chinese Communist Party exploited these overtures, turning U.S. openness into a strategic advantage,” writes Vincent C. Chen, the former student leader of Taiwan’s Wild Lily movement, a senior executive in Taiwan’s telecommunications industry and an advisory board member at two leading Taiwanese think tanks, Taiwan Thinktank and the Foundation for Future Generations.

In a new op-ed for The Times, Mr. Chen argues that it’s long past time for Washington to abandon the idea that engaging with the Chinese Communist Party is a worthwhile and effective strategy.

“Tariffs and talks are no longer enough. The scale of damage demands a new strategy,” he writes. 

• June 30 — What Do Strikes on Iran Mean for China, Russia and North Korea? Center for Strategic & International Studies

• July 7 — The Power Behind Israel’s Economic Strength in War, The Heritage Foundation 

• July 11 — The Han Kuang Exercise and the Taiwanese Military’s Road to Readiness, Hudson Institute

• July 13-17 — GenAI Summit, GenAI Week

• July 15-18 — Aspen Security Forum, Aspen Institute

• July 16 — Global Swing States and the New Great Power Competition, Center for a New American Security