Threat Status for Monday, July 21, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
Questions are swirling over the extent to which the Trump administration is getting squeezed out of a new multination push for nuclear talks with Iran.
… Sources tell Threat Status that American spies are closely studying what Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies think they learned about U.S. bombing capabilities from the recent U.S. strikes on Iran.
… Russia unleashed another hourslong drone and missile assault on Kyiv overnight, targeting the Ukrainian capital ahead of a Germany-U.K. led meeting on President Trump’s push for new NATO weapons shipments to Ukraine.
… U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack is doubling down on Washington’s support for the new Syrian government, criticizing Israel’s recent intervention in Syria as poorly timed and destabilizing.
… Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, a conservative nationalist, is being forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor as he faces trial on allegations he masterminded a failed coup plot to stay in power.
… A least 18 people were killed Monday when a Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed in Dhaka.
… The U.S.-based World Central Kitchen aid organization says it’s run out of ingredients necessary to prepare meals for hungry Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
… And the appointment of Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte to head the U.S. Naval Academy marks the first time a Marine Corps general will be in charge of the school.
Iran’s government says it will hold renewed nuclear talks with officials from Britain, France and Germany on Friday in Turkey, a new twist that suggests multilateral diplomacy with Tehran — rather than direct negotiations with the Trump administration — is gaining steam as the Trump-brokered Israel-Iran ceasefire continues to hold.
Russia, a key security partner of Iran, is also seen to have an increasing role in the new diplomatic push. Monday’s announcement of the upcoming Iran talks came a day after Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues, held a surprise meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While U.S. negotiators are not slated to participate in Friday’s talks in Turkey, German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Martin Giese told reporters in Berlin on Monday that Germany, Britain and France are working “at high pressure on a sustainable and verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program” through a “course of action” that “is also coordinated with the U.S.”
The Pentagon is engaged in an increasingly aggressive push to accelerate the delivery of advanced, small and versatile drone systems to American warfighters across the services. New and established U.S. defense contractors are scrambling in unprecedented ways to develop and scale the production of the transformative technology at a fraction of the small cost of more conventional large drone platforms.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz offers a deep-dive analysis, noting the relevance of the Taiwan Strait within the emerging contest for drone warfare dominance. Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, commander of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command, has signaled that drone warfare is a central element in his strategy of deterring China, whose president has made annexing Taiwan a “core” interest for Beijing.
“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Adm. Paparo said in June 2024. In October, he told The Washington Times that his “hellscape” drone concept grew out of the Pentagon’s Replicator program, a Biden-era initiative that pushed drone designs to several defense contractors that are expected to rapidly produce large numbers at a low cost.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he will not step down despite his ruling coalition losing control of the country’s upper house in Sunday’s elections. The prime minister’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Buddhist party Komeito, fell short of the 50 seats needed to claim control of the House of Councillors.
Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon is closely tracking the developments in Japan, a key U.S. security ally on China’s periphery. A wobbly Tokyo polity could not come at a worse time for Japan, which is facing an unusual showdown with Washington over the Trump administration’s vow to slap export-dependent Japan’s goods with 25% tariffs on Aug. 1 unless a bilateral agreement to crumble trade barriers is reached.
All the while, security risks loom. Japan was shaken by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, fearing it could embolden regional players like North Korea, with its expanding nuclear force, and China, with its muscular power-projection capabilities.
A perusal of social media in the U.S. before and during the Iran-Israel conflict “may have given the impression that President Trump had felt heat from isolationist influencers on social media platforms who railed against ‘regime change’ in Iran,” writes Jason Epstein, president of Southfive Strategies LLC, an international public affairs consultancy.
“But Mr. Trump’s own words, both in office and earlier on the campaign trail, clearly stated that while Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon, an overthrow wasn’t desirable,” Mr. Epstein writes in an op-ed in The Washington Times. “Other Republicans concurred, and even uber-interventionist Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, last month wasn’t pushing for American boots on the ground.
“What Mr. Trump and his advisers have long appreciated, going back at least to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, was the need to understand the perspectives of both Israel and our Muslim majority allies in the region,” he writes. “Among the latter, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Azerbaijan are three important players that brought issues to the table, which the administration considered.”
Andrew P. Napolitano takes stock of how a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia recently invalidated a plea agreement for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been incarcerated at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 20 years and has been charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder in the United States on 9/11.
“None of this jurisprudential mess would have occurred had [former President George W. Bush] allowed the criminal justice structure to proceed unimpeded,” writes Mr. Napolitano in The Times. “The use of torture, rotating judges and prosecutors, and incarceration for a generation without charges or trial are all hallmarks of an authoritarian government.
“If justice consists in convicting the guilty using established norms and fair procedures, Gitmo has been an unjust, inhumane disaster,” he writes. “But if justice consists in the government getting whatever it wants, then the Constitution is useless as a protector of freedom.”
• July 29 — ICE Pact: The Icebreaker Collaboration Effort and Arctic Security Conversation, The Heritage Foundation
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